What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
It’s been a long time since we’ve delved deep into the information available about
older champions, so today we decided to take a trip down memory lane and create a What
Could Have Been for one of the champions that has been around for a pretty long time.
We’re talking about the exile herself, Riven, who was originally released in Season One.
Riven’s origins actually lie in another cancelled champion, Avasha.
There isn’t much information about Avasha, but you can see where the inspiration came
from—the white hair, armor-clad swordswoman is very much what the initial Riven was intended
to be.
When Riot Manton began to sketch out Riven’s concept art, it was actually undecided whether
she would be male or female.
This lead Manton to produce versions of both, although the team eventually decided to go
with female for two very good reasons; firstly, most melee weapon users were male, and secondly
most female champions at this point were pretty sexualised.
Turning Riven into a female essentially gave them the chance to deepen League’s portrayal
of female characters.
Since she was originally a soldier, she likely once wore a full suit of armor, but Manton
mentioned that Riot chose to turn Riven into an exile, it no longer made sense for her
to continue to wear the gear.
Instead, he opted to keep a few pieces to remember the past.
From that point, it was just about deciding which pieces would flow best with a mostly
unarmored character while still looking good in game, which ended up being the shoulder
pauldron and a single greave on her leg.
Although nowadays we associate red and black to be the colors of Noxus, originally they
were actually Green and Purple, as can be seen in the original Swain, Cassiopeia and
Urgot classic skins.
That’s the reasoning behind Riven’s armor and sword being green.
Although Riot moved towards red and black for Noxus, this ended up working out in their
favor, since Riven is technically an exile now and wouldn’t really care to update her
appearance with the more modern Noxus aesthetic.
Something you may have picked up on from the early concept art was that Riven’s sword
was shattered—this was a pretty defining part of her character concept, with the idea
that her Ultimate would reform the sword being a pretty early staple of her design.
The other core of Riven’s design came from Riot Xypherous, who had designed a three-part
melee ability that led to some pretty sick combos.
This is of course now Riven’s Q, Broken Wings, but originally it was designed for
a Demacian fighter, not a Noxian!
The team quickly realise that there were already a large number of melee fighters on the roster
that hailed from Demacia.
Instead of continuing with the Demacian theme, the team decided to shift over to a Noxian
fighter, where they could break the assumption that all people from Noxus were insufferably
evil.
The Exile Riven was well suited for this concept, so it was finally time for the rest of her
gameplay to be developed.
The three-part Q served as inspiration for the rest of her gameplay, with the team aiming
to design a champion that would play like a character from a fighting game.
The focus here is on fast movement and combos, relying on constant and well timed button
presses.
It lined up pretty well with her backstory too—a Noxian soldier should of course be
able to pull off some pretty remarkable swordsmanship.
Despite the ‘fighting game’ theme behind her design, it was actually never intended
that players would be able to cancel Riven’s animations to the extent that can now.
Xypherous mentioned that her longer animations such as Q and E were supposed to be cancellable
by mechanically skilled players, but the coding system actually allowed players
to also cancel auto attacks.
Since perfect animation cancels are pretty important to playing Riven at a high level,
players have wondered for a long time if these cancellations would ever be removed.
It’s likely that this issue has been discussed at length over the years over at Riot, by
Xypherous did once note that if they ever decided to change Riven’s animation cancels,
they’d adjust her numbers or add new combos to compensate.
To this day, Riven’s animation cancels still exist as relics of the engine and the technical
limitations that Riot had in the earlier years of League’s development.
Returning to the topic of Riven’s broken blade, we are faced once again with one of
the earliest parts of her development—what to do with her reforged blade once she activated
that Ultimate.
Xypherous explained four of the potential candidates that were eventually scrapped in
favor of her AD boost, range increase and Wind Slash.
The first candidate was a rage bar, which interestingly was tested again a couple of
years back as a new passive.
The idea was that Riven could fill her rage bar by attacking, so playing aggressively
would allow her to remain empowered for longer.
It ended up being cancelled because Riven was already a hyper-aggressive champion—it
was simply overkill.
The experimental passive tested recently was fairly comparable.
The resource was called ‘Edge’ and it would charge her blade whenever she damaged
an enemy champion with the bonus damage from her Runic Blade passive.
It charged up just like rage, and her damage would increase as she gained more and more
‘Edge,’ although it was eventually dropped once again.
The next Ultimate concept was just a little bit of pure insanity on Riot’s part.
As those of you that have played fighting games will know, the beginner’s strategy
is the same for every character—just button mash.
This Ultimate would cause her abilities to reset her auto attacks, and her auto attacks
would reset her abilities.
Essentially that meant that she would be able to continue weaving damage into a fight without
ever worrying about cooldowns.
Xypherous commented that it was pretty terrible—although in this context that probably means it was
an overpowered mess and a terrible idea to begin with.
A third iteration of her Ultimate featured a kind of sonic boom that would knock back
everyone around her, similar perhaps to Xin Zhao’s Ultimate.
Unfortunately, Riven is a melee fighter, and doesn’t particularly enjoy having to waste
Q presses catching up with people, so it was scrapped due to a lack of synergy with the
rest of her kit.
The final Ultimate tested for Riven that we want to share with you today is arguably even
crazier than her zero cooldown version—beams of light, affectionately referred to as lasers
would shoot from her blade every time she used an ability.
This ability was of course once again simply too powerful, but it did give Riot that idea
to condense it into one move, giving birth to Wind Slash as we know
it today.