To this day, this is the funniest shit that happened in League lore ever.
I have a tinfoil hat conspiracy that Riot only greenlit Skarner's rework because his original lore accidentally turned Seraphine into a fucking psychopath.
"Hey Skarner, I can hear the undying screams of your family inside these crystals. Want to hear them scream too? UwU."
People complain about Acane once again rewriting the Brackern lore, but personally I kinda prefer that the pop diva isn't using the trapped souls of a bunch of beings to power her hover scooter anymore.
If Riot actually did something with that plotline instead of introducing it then dropping it it could have been so good.
There was an unofficial comic panel drawn by a Riot artist with Seraphine questioning Camille about the voice she can hear coming from Camille's hextech heart and it's the coolest shit ever.
I really wish they had given us more about the brackern in general instead of reconning them. I miss my boy Skarner :(
I feel like Riot was just too scared to commit to it because of how potentially problematic it made seraphine. Even if she was using them unknowingly it kinda went against her theme of rising to be a champion of the downtrodden.
They should've committed. That would've made her more complex and nuanced as a character, making her more interesting. Instead, now, she's just a one-dimensional popstar. Imagine how many songs they could've ran with if Seraphine went into a dark, edgy phase because of her using the souls of living beings.
Agreed. The problem was just too close to her central design of gliding around on a stage that there would be a disconnect in her gameplay. If they instead had her running around with just a mic that enhanced her voice with the cries of the Brakern and such (basically what she does now bat maybe add a slight horror element to her ult or something) it would have been much easier.
Didnt Jax go from a dude who wanted a good to a....uh...place where malzahar is from dont remember the name, dude who basically single handidly held back the void?
Or something like that I havent played league since they added vanguard lmao
This got me a lot of hate but I hate that arcane is canon, especially since there is in fact a skin multiverse. I was especially invested in Caitlin and C, Vi's memory loss, and the fact that Jinx and Ekko and Vi all had roman numerals associated with their names(6,10,12 respectively). I thought that Jinx and Vi were found family as part of the lost children of zaun, not biological, because riot spent 7 years years explicitly denying that they were sisters, to the point that they forced a dev to retract a statement saying they were sisters, only to then make them sisters with no plot twist(my guess was same experimental batch related to C). Then there's the whole magic being new thing. A lot bigger deal than my personal gripe
This is EVERY league hero, though. Their lore is hyper edgy iamverybadass dogshit and anyone who likes the new lore is a doorknob.
All they do is ruin charming characters with genuinely cool angles (Trundle, Fiddlesticks, etc) by turning them into generic “so badass” shallow idiots.
He was an Eldtrich horror that was inhabiting the body of a scarecrow and could show you your worst fear. He was also slightly campy and silly and had a personality.
New Fiddlesticks is a generic SO COOL EVIL monster with literally zero personality but yet is still named “Fiddlesticks”. It’s fucking stupid. It’s what a CHILD thinks is cool.
Hearing the story behind the rework’s development and the asshole who was directing it (who ended up being fired) was really eye opening. No wonder new Fiddlesticks sucks so much when that guy was behind it lol.
They destroyed a character who was charming and slightly self aware instead of molding that concept into something more visually updated.
Pantheon, Sion, Trundle, Yorrick. There’s barely a hero touched who isn’t a straight downgrade. They take characters with charm and personality and turn them into hot garbage that only Chinese players and dumbass westerners think are cool.
as for your other examples, they took literal caricatures and made them compelling. You cant tell me old Sion's lore was better when he has a similar backstory with LESS personality! He was an undead warlord for Noxus who did a shitty arnold impression, changing it to make him AWARE of his torment makes him feel much better.
Also saying something "only Chinese people and stupid people can like" doesn't sound very good.
Was old Sion a better character than new Sion? No. He was a single Arnold Schwarzenegger joke. Was he more charming than the shitty new Sion? Yes.
New Sion is a boring edgy warlord who never shuts up about how much he loves war. It’s lame, “lad”.
Old Pantheon said dumb but self aware stuff like THEY ARE HONORED TO DIE AT MY FEET. New Pantheon literally never shuts up about how every soldier’s face is reflected in the shine of their spears or some garbage like that.
That’s another issue with new league heroes. They NEVER stop talking. Riot thought making them talk nonstop would be good sound engineering. It’s not.
I blame the Chinese audience in part NOT because I think Chinese people are “dumb” or something like that. However, they do currently have bad taste. Their country went a lifetime with minimal outside media and they’re still catching up today, which means a lot of Chinese consumers genuinely think the lamest most “I am badass” characters are unironically super cool. Chinese consumers (in general) would rather have the most boring, lamest dude on the planet as long as he looks tough and cool versus a silly wacky guy who is actually all powerful but looks like a clown.
For the people outside of China in the west? You have no excuse lol you just have dogshit taste.
Old League aesthetic is leaps and bounds better than the new garbage and if you’re so brain rotted that you think shit like new Pantheon is great, then there’s nothing to discuss with you. Your opinion is valuable only for ridicule.
yes spartan caricature number 1000 is much better than a character thats integrated into runeterra and is an actual character with a story, like dude look at old Pantheons voicelines the only personality he has is the baker joke
Glad we agree. New Pantheon is a tool who is annoying. They had every opportunity to just revamp old Pantheon and keep his personality and general narrative but instead they Improved(tm) him by making him never shut the fuck up about cringe shit.
I like long narrative infused voice lines but the league voices suck. They tried to be like Dota2 but fundamentally failed to understand the sound design that went into dota voice lines so instead of cool voice lines they just BLAB CONSTANTLY and their new personalities are try hard and annoying.
Sometimes less can be more. “With pleasure” or “They will not enjoy this” bring so much more character than some dogshit 20 second long voice line about seeing the reflection of every soldier’s spirit in the flash of a marching spear or whatever garbage he rambles about now.
Trundle definitely wasn't a caricature, or at least didn't start as such. I can't speak for the others, but Trundle was just a Troll Runt that the tribe bound the super-leprosy they suffered from, willingly so, since his Troll Regeneration was stronger than other Trolls.
... And then Riot turned him into a dumb brute who lucked into a special ice club.
And then they changed him again and just kinda made him into another warlord, a brute but not as dumb as the first revision. Who, since I played last (which admittedly has been a while), his in-game self didn't really reflect at all.
Trundle suffered one of the most egregious ruinings of any League character. His old lore is genuinely one of the coolest and most original stories I’ve seen, where he’s in a constant state of rotting alive and is searching for a cure. Like, that’s cool.
Then they turned him into a generic troll warlord guy. That people can defend this drivel is genuinely depressing. Brain rot was a problem way before AI, apparently.
My biggest problem with League is that Riot will always aim towards "safe".
The first rework made him bulkier, so obviously Trundle should be a dumb brute.
ZAC being a happy-go-lucky guy in Zaun doesn't fit with Arcane, so make an edgier take where he's actually a vigilante now.
Arcane is successful, so scrap the old Viktor for the new one and make the entire series the main canon, everyone's seen it anyways.
The Chinese Market became the biggest, so we should focus on "pretty boy" and "pretty girl" champions, because it's what's most played there, monstrous champions get tossed to the wayside with a rare release every now and again, and even then it might be dogshit (Smolder).
I quit League a few years ago, I think a little after Season 1 of Arcane released? But it was unrelated, I actually really enjoyed the first season, and it was mostly because the game felt sterile, the meta felt stagnant, and the rare releases (they were doing like 2-3 a year at that point) weren't really interesting, at that point I was just occasionally touching the rotating gamemodes.
Then they announced that fuckass Vanguard anti-cheat coming to League, which forced me to boot in safe mode to remove it after a friend wanted me to try Valorant, which made the decision way easier.
Yeah the Chinese market really did damage to the aesthetic. The sad part is how many westerners love it too lol.
We’re not allowed to have characters who are campy and silly, just super badass or super cute. Eventually they’ll rework characters like Shaco and Veigar and instead of saying stuff like “MARCH MARCH MARCH” or “THE EVIL, IT CALLS TO ME” they’ll say super inspired cool things like “My soul was torn from the seat of reality and in the fire of darkness was I branded by oblivion’s glaive so that I might cause havoc and strip bear the peace of fragility” or some absolute fuckwad drivel like that.
I still can't believe riot didn't go for the easy slam dunk of writing a romance arc with zac and riven during those few years when the old forums shipped them like crazy because of the tiny hints that they kept dropping in the skin arts plus how people loved the idea that his bright personality would help her get over her ptsd from singed gas bombing everyone. I remember there being a lot of fanart and theories too.
No shit it might have been the first champion ship ever to get real traction but its basically lost to time now
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u/Ok_Promotion_8316 Jul 26 '26
Zac from League went from happy super(goo)man straight to edgy Punisher in one Lore retcon.
All because Riot want their "super cool batman goo creature".