RIGHT: (^) Spirit Blossom
established a brand
new mode of in-game
storytelling.
“WE STARTED EXPLORING LARGER
THEMATIC
EVENTS THAT
CROSS
MULTIPLE
GAMES”
COVER FEATURE
RIOT TV MUSIC GAMES
“IT’S JUST YOU AND ME, BOOK!”
A history of League of Legends storytelling
THE JOURNAL OF
JUSTICE 2010-2012
In the earliest days of
League of Legends, lore
and worldbuilding was
handled via an in-universe
newspaper, the Journal
of Justice.
IONIA VS NOXUS
LORE MATCH 2010
Ionia’s victory in this
player-driven lore match
led to the creation of some
themed in-game boots,
but had little further
impact on Runeterra.
LORE REBOOT 2014
In 2014, Riot revamped
the game’s loreentirely,
reshaping theworldand
removing theideaofthe
game being akindof
in-universe political
death-sport.
UNIVERSE2 0 1 4
ThatledtotheUniverse,a
compendiumallowing
playerstobrowseshort
storiesbychampionor
region,completewitha
new,detailedmapof
Runeterraitself.
MARVEL 2020
Riothaspartneredwith
noneotherthanMarvel
fora seriesofcomic
storiesdivingintothe
adventuresand
backstoriesofAshe,
Lux,andZed.
SPIRIT BLOSSOM
2020
Spirit Blossom helped
explain the arrival of Yone.
While its visual novel-style
narrative wasn’t strictly
canon, it’s already shaping
the future of LoL.
foreseeable future”
where champion releases
will halt, but getting launches right
has become increasingly tricky,
particularly as champion complexity
seems to remain on an upward trend.
The last two years have seen the
launch of some of the most intricate
champions in the game’s history, both
in terms of how hard they are to
understand and how many tools they
have at their disposal. Riot says it
doesn’t think its champions are
inherently overloaded, but does plan
to scale ideas back, “We’re going to
be putting more focus on complexity
of new champs in 2022, particularly
being more critical of designs that
feel like they have a tool to respond
to every situation too effectively
when you play against them.”
LORE OF LEGENDS
League of Legends’ lore has gathered
more and more substance over its
lifespan, but until last year, much of
that narrative was pretty static. That
changed with Spirit Blossom.
Leaning on the arrival of champion
Yone, the game client became home
to an entire fantasy visual novel.
“In the last couple of years, we
started exploring larger thematic
events that cross multiple games,”
Meddler says. “We think they’ve got
an enormous
amount of potential.”
While Riot was “really happy” with
the results of Spirit Blossom “our
follow-up, The Ruination, was, we
feel, a bit more hit and miss”. That
story, a grand war where champions
teamed up with and against the
ghostly king Viego, “didn’t deliver on
expectations around the tone”.
Events like these don’t seem to be
going anywhere. With dozens of
alternate realities immediately at
hand, “we’re really excited to keep
working on larger events like this and
incorporate learnings from previous
ones”. Sometimes, League of Legends
will remain a key focal point of those
experiences, but other times “it’ll be
a supporting piece of the ecosystem”,
as with the launch of Arcane.
The MOBA landscape has
changed a lot since the original
launch of League of Legends, but so
has LoL itself. Even as other titles
lean on the LoL name, however,
Meddler suggests that the defining
experience will be maintained.
“We certainly want to keep the
game evolving, based on meeting the
changing needs of our playerbase and
similar future players, rather than
trying to reinvent League of Legends as
a whole at the expense of our existing
audience. If we think there are
opportunities that are very different,
but worth pursuing, we’re open to
that, but as separate experiences like
TFT or standalone games at Riot,
rather than as a replacement for
League of Legends’s core offerings.”
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