Ahri is the next League of Legends champion to receive an Art and Sustainability update from Riot. Finally, the ASU team has revealed some insights into the rework, showing fans what they can expect from Ahri come 2023.
In 2021, when Arcane was released, Riot also revealed their first ASU for Caitlyn, giving her model a complete overhaul, her skins a brush up and her splash arts as well. Her voice lines and narrative was also sharpened up.
Now, it's Ahri's turn and we know that the mid lane nine-tailed-fox will have her ASU go live sometime early 2023. She's one of the champions with the msot skins in the entire game, so of course it'll take a while for her ASU. But, Riot just released a dev post, outlining some key points of her ASU.
Ahri ASU: Why Ahri?
So first of all, let's go over why Ahri was chosen for this ASU and what this truly means for her going forward. ASU stands for Art and Sustainability Update, which means Riot won't be touching her abilities or gameplay, instead just her art, concept and everything surrounding that will get updated.
So, Riot is looking to update her model, so she becomes more sustainable for the future, which means it'll be easier to make new skins for her, as well as update her art and skins. Therefore, all of Ahri's skins and her base will have updated animations, visuals as well as audio.
Key Channges in Ahri's ASU
Of course, one of the biggest changes has got to be the animations on Ahri. A key focus for her in-game model was for her tails to flow and move correctly, giving them that fluffy look of a fox's tail. The animation team worked hard to try and make the tails as believable as possible, even giving each tail their own set of animations.
Charm is one of Ahri’s most iconic abilities, and we really wanted to use the tails to make the iconic moment even more impactful. We really wanted to express her alluring nature and show how far the new tail rig could be pushed to make nice poses.
Using Ahri's charms will make two of her tails move together into the shape of a heart to accentuate the ability even further for fans. This is just one of the small details that will make Ahri look way better than she currently does.
Of course, animation isn't the only big thing Riot have worked on. Her narrative, voice over and VFX have also gotten an overhaul. In the dev post Elyse “Riot apothecarie” Lemoine, Senionr Narrative Writer explained that the team was thinking whether to include Ahri's arch which took place in the Riot Forge game Ruined King: A League of Legends Story.
In the end it was decided that it would be more interesting to add it into her ASU, so you can expect some interesting new voice lines for Ahri as well in the future.
Her appearance will also be improved, with the concept team working on making her elegant as she has always been, while also incorporating a more feral side which Ahri is also known for from her lore. The team had to find the right balance between Ahri from the trailer 'A New Dawn' as well as the popular Ahri depiction of 'Ruined King: A League of Legends Story'.
The most important part of her ASU was to keep her fantasy the same without taking from it and giving players who main her even more reasons to play Ahri. So, expect Ahri's ASU in 2023 as was announced earlier in the summer already.