In a recent dev video Riot finally revealed the direction for lore in League of Legends and Runeterra in general. After months of questions, we finally have an update.
Lore is a core part of League of Legends and the world of Runeterra, but throughout the years there have been a lot of inconsistencies in story telling. Now, Riot is finally letting the fans know what direction they're taking with lore and why short stories likely won't be coming back.
LoL Lore: Riot Wants To Squash Inconsistencies
When League of Legends was first released, there were only a few champions on Summoner's Rift and no real thought behind them. As the game got bigger and bigger, an entire world was built through the characters and Runeterra was born.
But the stories haven't always been consistent and throughout the years, Riot has been making changes and adjustments to the lore here and there. Now there is a whole group of people working on lore to make sure that across all the League IPs it's consistent and stays the same.
This doesn't mean every single champion will be retconned, but it means that those champs that do stick out will have some of their stories adjusted.
One of the examples given by Jeremy "Brightmoon" Lee is Skarner and the creation of Hextech. In Arcane, we saw a completely different story to Hextech, which the League universe will now adapt. Thanks to Skarner's VGU, the champions team and lore team will be able to create a new fitting character for him – this time from Ixtal.
This will also mean that other champions affected by Skarner's lore, as well as the lore of Hextech in general, will be receiving some updates to their stories and backgrounds, like Seraphine and Camille.
League of Legends Lore To Be Spread Out Through Different Mediums
Not only will Riot be making changes to the lore of certain champions, they will also do so through different mediums. With Riot having created Riot Forge, a publisher working alongside various developers, more stories are able to get to a broader audience through games rather than stories.
Riot Meddler explained in the dev blog that, "short stories are something we've deliberately moved away from. [They] were an effective way to dig into character backgrounds more deeply when we didn't have other ways of doing so." He also added that those have been very niche experiences that most players never engaged with. Therefore, short stories will likely not return.
Season Start Cinematics Will Be Canon
Not only will players be getting games filled with lore, as well as new tidbits in other Riot Games like Legends of Runeterra, but through visuals like season cinematics.
Riot Brightmoon even revealed that the one planned for 2024 will be canon and part of the League of Legends universe.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we'll be getting short stories anymore, but lore is evolving... even if players will now have to pay for lore when it comes to Riot Forge games.
More League of Legends Content for you: