What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
Halfway through 2013, Riot released a sneak peek of an upcoming champion that ended up
being one of the bigger mistakes they had made in recent years.
It was the first look at Ao Shin, which we recently talked about as a pivotal moment
in Riot’s growth as a developer in a previous video.
Today we want to shine the spotlight on Ao Shin once again, but this time focusing on
the cancelled champion himself.
Since we’ve recently made big changes to the way we produce our content, I thought
this would be a great opportunity to apply our new production style to my old favorite
series, and so today we’re talking about what Ao Shin, and by extension Aurelion Sol
could have been!
The idea behind Ao Shin & Potential Abilities
Ao Shin was controversial not because the concept was bad - in fact, the exact opposite
was true.
Riot approached the player base and started to build the hype for a daring new champion
that was unlike anything ever released in the game thus far.
He wouldn’t have been the first Dragon to grace Summoner’s Rift, but his concept as
a lightning storm dragon would have placed him in a league of his own.
Riot SixTwo announced Ao Shin as a response to the community’s desire for a true dragon
champion, and in the process they wanted to push the limits of what was technically and
creatively possible for the game, particularly when it came to his anatomy and movement.
The idea for Ao Shin was rooted in Chinese mythology about the Dragon Kings, and his
abilities reflected that with the focus being on control over the seas and weather.
The concept art for Ao Shin gave a lot of cool ideas for abilities, such as him breathing
lightning, creating tornados or rainstorms, but from Rioter comments we only know about
two abilities that were actually created for Ao Shin before he was cancelled.
To start with, Riot mentioned that they tested the idea of having permanent or toggled flight
on a champion with Ao Shin, giving them the ability to ignore terrain and walls.
The problem is that it allowed him to completely destroy all melee champions since you’ll
only get hit once before escaping, and going over walls comes with its own set of issues.
To start with, being able to ignore walls is a very powerful ability - but ignoring
walls also means increasing vision radius, and for that to be balanced it would take
up the vast majority of the champion’s power budget.
Riot had other ideas to give their dragon the feeling of flight and air superiority
though, and that lies within another one of his cancelled abilities.
The execution was similar to Lee Sin’s Resonating Strike, except with a global range.
Ao Shin would be able to send a storm cloud in the target direction that marked enemies
who were hit.
Then he could dash to the target as a massive bolt of lightning, giving him some pretty
insane map pressure!
Production Struggles
After multiple delays and comments from Rioters on the message boards, it became increasingly
clear that Ao Shin’s development was having some serious issues.
The dragon concept was just as epic as ever, but a lot of his story and gameplay elements
were really slowing down progress.
Eventually, Riot decided that the only way to proceed with their dragon champion was
to drop the storm concept and look at other variants.
The key feeling that the dragon should portray was one of awe and wonder, which is what led
them to the idea of a space dragon.
From that point forward, Ao Shin was no more - and Aurelion Sol was born.
Evolution into Aurelion Sol
The transition from storm dragon to space dragon opened up a lot of potential for Riot
to create some really fresh new abilities, but they still had to nail the movement by
making sure his tail was nice and fluid, and that the fluidity fit in with his gameplay.
At one point Aurelion Sol had a body which described as being around 12 Teemos in length,
giving playtesters the desire to wrap and coil around their opponents.
It ended up working kinda like a Tron light cycle, where you could block or trap enemies
inside your tail, but it ended up taking up a lot of his power budget to give him the
speed necessary to pull it off, while also causing big issues when it came to hiding
in bushes.
Riot also played with the idea of flight in a similar way to what they did with Ao Shin,
for example giving him a charge when he levelled up that would allow him to quickly jump to
anywhere on the map, with the ability being both uninterruptable and making him untargetable
during the travel time.
The solution to Aurelion Sol’s core gameplay was created by Riot RabidLlama, who stumbled
upon the orbiting stars as a way to place the focus on Aurelion Sol’s movement while
also demonstrating how he effortlessly wields this awesome cosmic power.
This movement-based gameplay did end up eating a big share of his power budget and giving
him a pretty underwhelming ultimate in the process, but overall Riot managed to get the
concept across pretty well.
You could argue it would have been better received if they hadn’t built so much hype
for Ao Shin, but it’s fair to say Aurelion Sol did end up as a success.
So I hope you guys enjoyed this inside look into the development for Ao Shin and Aurelion
Sol, we did switch up the format a lot to make it much more concise while still containing
a similar amount of overall information, so let us know if you enjoyed it.
As well, all of the sources used to find the info we talked about can be found in the description,
so check them out if you want to do your own research.
Thanks for watching and I’ll see you guys next time!