What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
Today we are bringing you the pilot episode of a new format that we’re going to be trying
out, and hopefully the first of many!
We enjoy making What Could Have Been videos to document the entire development story of
a champion, but sometimes there are just so many interesting bits of info that we can’t
really fit them into that style.
So for our new Secrets video, we are going to be focusing exactly that—giving you guys
all the fun bits of info that most people simply don’t know about, unless of course
you work at Riot!
The first secret we want to share with you guys is that Urgot’s reworked passive was
actually originally dreamt up for his Q!
The ability was known at the time as Hexapod, a reference to the idea that the ability would
fire from one of six legs.
Interestingly, until this point there was actually no plans to give Urgot an extra two
legs, which meant artists had to recreate that aspect of him when this ability was decided
to be a good fit for production.
Originally, Hexapod would slam the ground in the direction of an active leg, knocking
away minions and dealing damage in a cone.
After that, Urgot would be unable to slam with the same leg again for a while, so it
would basically require players to position themselves carefully to be able to reuse the
ability consistently.
Repertoir created some janky designer particles to demonstrate the effect, and you can see
how Urgot has six directions in which he can fire his cone out.
When Riot eventually decided to turn this into his Passive, they decided to go full
metal and give him shotgun knees rather than just a casual leg slam—and we think they
made a good choice, because that’s seriously badass!
The next cool secrets about Urgot’s rework are actually all developed bugs!
The first one on our list occured pretty late in production.
The assets were pretty much all in place for a full release at this point—he had the
new model and new animations, and that’s the core of this particular bug.
The trick to triggering the bug was to hit joke and then recall.
The animations would overlay each other, and combine together in a pretty funny way.
Urgot’s joke causes him to pull a duck out of his stomach, whilst his recall has a pretty
specific hand and arm gesture.
By using joke and then recall, the bug would make the duck stay attached to Urgot’s hand
bone, before then flying away.
As the recall animation continued, Urgot would reach out dramatically as his little friend
flew away, as if he was telling you to admire his duck.
The next bugs are all focused on his legs—the first one happened when traveling through
a Bard tunnel.
Unlike most champions that become temporarily disabled when moving through the tunnel, Urgot’s
shotgun knees would stay visible.
If his W, Purge was up, you’d be able to do a drive-by shooting of someone near the
tunnel because those legs had a life of their own!
Riot had a lot of difficulty controlling those legs, there was also a bug where the legs
would spazz out while W was active.
Depending on how far away the target was, they would be locked into doing a walk transition
on a .25 second transition, which would probably make him look even more creepy than usual.
Occasionally, the legs would also get stuck in the raised animation too—so Urgot would
end up hovering around instead of crab-walking!
The next thing we want to showcase is his concept art, which probably counts as secret
because most of you won’t have ever seen it before.
Now we’ve known for a long time that Urgot is the resident creep of the League universe,
and that Riot wanted to preserve the horror of his existence with the rework.
But the concept art pushed out for Urgot’s update was nothing short of terrifying.
You have to admire the skill that goes into creating twisted art like this.
Our favorite pieces are probably the crabgot staring down at a poor child, and the female
being pulled into his saw blades by his Ultimate’s chains.
That’s some god tier horror art right there.
Something you may not known about Urgot though is that he was originally designed to be a
lot more theatrical about his sadistic tendencies, kinda like our resident serial killer Jhin.
For example, the reworked Urgot’s original taunt was actually a minute-long monologue
that only ended if he was attacked—although Rioters have noted that it was removed because
it got old pretty quickly.
Another taster of Urgot’s original theatricality was when he’d pull out an organ during his
Ultimate; he’d enjoy playing you a lovely tune and monologuing at you as you were chained
up and whirled into your inevitable doom.
It made a lot of sense that Riot removed these aspects to his character; when players think
about Urgot pre-rework they don’t tend to imagine him being the theatrical type, but
admittedly it would have been pretty cool to see.
Heading back over to gameplay, we have two more scrapped abilities for you next.
Repertoir mentioned that before the shotgun legs that we mentioned earlier existed, the
prototype for Urgot was actually closer to his original form as an artillery champion.
His E was a long range arcing cluster bomb that would split into a bunch of what he calls
‘fear mines’ on the ground, placed randomly in the target location.
The idea was that Urgot would lay down this insane battlefield that the enemies would
have to move through with great caution, but there were a ton of problems with the ability.
To start with, considering ever mine carried damage and a fear, it was really punishing
when you hit them.
That meant they had to be really fair to dodge, and of course that means that Urgot had almost
no control over how successful the use of the ability would actually be.
Irregardless of that, they will apparently still too punishing for opponents!
Part of this came down to Repertoir’s questionable scripting of the ability—it was nicknamed
the Bounce House of Doom because running into one mine would often fear you into another,
causing an inescapable and brutal chain reaction.
The next scrapped ability was basically Jinx’s
Switcheroo on steroids.
The ability was on his Q, and activating it would toggle between three different weapons.
The cooldown was pretty fair and it always cycled in the same order, and depending on
which weapon you had, your abilities would also be modified.
Because the order was the same and the cooldown wasn’t instant like Jinx, the gameplay felt
pretty forced at times.
For example, you might switch into your melee weapon and have no choice but to get stuck
into some close combat, until the cooldown came up and you could cycle into artillery
mode and start blasting enemies from a distance.
It was apparently pretty good fun to use, but it was extremely complicated and basically
caused Urgot to have 12 different abilities, which was definite overkill.
Since we’re still on the topic of gameplay, it might be a good time to mention that there’s
actually potential for Urgot’s Ultimate to make a grand return one day.
Repertoir was answering a question regarding Urgot’s original Ult, pointing out that
the design was really original and unlike most other things in the game currently.
He mentioned that they had actually considered keeping that, but because they wanted to push
Urgot more towards the horror fantasy, his ‘high’ moment needed to be just brutal
elimination, pure and simple.
The old Ult was way too powerful to be a basic ability, so it couldn’t fit his kit, but
he mentioned that it may turn up on a different
kit instead some day.
That’s all the secrets about Urgot’s rework that we have for you today, except one last
little parting gift for those of you that made it this far.
It turns out that Urgot actually has a secret Golden Duck in his emotes!
Typing /joke or using CTRL+1 a bunch of times will cause Urgot to take out random objects,
and although it may take many attempts, eventually he’ll pull out a golden duck.
If you manage to summon this special item, you’ll actually be granted a little reward—a
small amount of XP and some gold.
So next time you are playing Urgot and waiting for something to happen in lane or chilling
in a bush, remember to spam your joke and get yourself a nice little reward for your
perseverance.