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f13.net General Forums => League of Legends => Topic started by: Thrawn on July 22, 2014, 07:42:04 AM



Title: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Thrawn on July 22, 2014, 07:42:04 AM
I don't play, or even like LoL anymore, but I still thought this was a very impressive cinematic they posted today - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzHrjOMfHPY

Would have liked to see a little more of Jax being as insanely bad ass as he's supposed to be though.  :oh_i_see:


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: luckton on July 22, 2014, 08:35:07 AM
 :drill:


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Nebu on July 22, 2014, 01:39:32 PM
Looks like they learned a lesson from Wildstar; how to make your cinematics more interesting than your game. 

Cool vid though.


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Brofellos on July 22, 2014, 02:45:14 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df85iQCXJA0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df85iQCXJA0)

Relevant follow-up.


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: luckton on July 23, 2014, 01:03:10 AM
http://youtu.be/vzHPzDRxU48

Patch notes to reflect changes observed in video.

 :grin:


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Nebu on July 23, 2014, 08:46:13 AM
http://youtu.be/vzHPzDRxU48

Patch notes to reflect changes observed in video.

 :grin:

Now THAT was awesome.


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Malakili on July 25, 2014, 07:33:26 AM
Neeeds more Lucian.


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Kail on September 07, 2014, 01:55:38 AM
Not exactly the best fit for this topic, but I didn't think it was a big enough deal to start a new one, anyway:

This is a few days old but apparently there's a League of Legends lore revamp in the works. (http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/creative-spotlight/dev-blog-exploring-runeterra)  And by "revamp" I mean they're taking a hatchet to it.  They're getting rid of concepts that they had difficulty working around, like the idea of Summoners, the Institute of War, the Journal of Justice, the character Judgements they used to do, and the League of Legends.  Yes, the League of Legends will no longer be canon in League of Legends.

We need an emoticon that's like a capital  :uhrr:  This lore team is just about the most derp I've ever seen at managing an IP.  And they've been going downhill for months, years arguably.  You've got a game where a mummy with magic powers headbutts a ninja so a cyborg bug can shoot missiles at him, and they don't seem to realize that this isn't some great literary endeavor that's going to stand next to Chaucer and Sartre, you don't need these epic sweeping storylines and deep characterizations, you just need a paragraph of text about who this weird mummy guy is and why it makes sense for him to have the powers he's got.  And that's if we were even GETTING epic storylines and good characterization etc. etc. which we're not, we're not getting anything except generic fantasywank character bios every now and then, and even THOSE are getting fucked up because they keep rewriting the shitting things every few months when a neuron fires and someone decides to change everything for some future plotline which never materializes because this is a multiplayer video game and not a goddamn Homeric epic.  AAARGH!

Like, literally the only reason they even have jobs is that this is League of Legends and nobody gives a shit about the lore.  And it's not like I don't realize that ultimately, yeah, the lore of League of Legends is not that big a deal, it just annoys me seeing someone suck so badly at their job.  It's like if McDonalds hired fanfic writers to revitalize the backstories of their mascot characters, and now Grimace is in a committed lesbian relationship with Early Bird or something.  I mean, on the one hand, I can't deny that ultimately, it doesn't matter on basically any level, but on the other hand.... goddamn, y'know?  [/rant]


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Margalis on September 07, 2014, 06:02:56 AM
Few points:

1. "Lore" means "shit." "Lore" is only lore, as opposed to backstory, dialog, characterization, etc, when it sucks.

2. Their lore has been awful - not only is it dumb and irrelevant, but poorly written, often with typos and grammar / spelling issues.

3. The idea of the summoner was dumb. It takes you out of the character by saying that rather than being the character you play as a being controlling them. It's also dumb how the character talk to you (Sona: "Only you can hear me summoner") and how the fiction of the game is that you are what, some sort of god, that controls these beings?

When you play LoL you say "I'm playing as Sona" not "I'm playing as a being controlling Sona." The whole concept was dumb.

4. What the fuck was the original story of League of Legends. What is the League? I have no idea. Why are these people fighting? What are the fields of justice? I have no clue and I've played the game a ton.
---

My understanding is that they are getting rid of the idea of summoners, the league and all that shit and just making it that people are fighting each other. And trying to focus more on character quotes, animations, and other in-game stuff and less on paragraphs of poorly written lore text. Sounds good to me. (But their lore department is terrible so I'm sure they'll fuck it up somehow)


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: ezrast on September 07, 2014, 06:15:48 AM
Yeah, they have absolutely no idea how to play to their strengths. I remember being pissed at the Trundle rework because his story was kind of cool, and they axed it in favor of Trundle's Big Adventure and Trundle vs The Ice Witch because the original was too complete and didn't have room for expansion into whatever grand narrative bullshit tapestry they think they're weaving. They seemed to be under the impression that if they tried hard enough they could come up with a compelling story justification for why random permutations of dudes murder each other over and over in the same spot forever, rather than letting that part be handwaved away and just making the characters compelling in their own right, which is what players actually care about.


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Malakili on September 07, 2014, 06:17:50 AM


4. What the fuck was the original story of League of Legends. What is the League? I have no idea. Why are these people fighting? What are the fields of justice? I have no clue and I've played the game a ton.


Quote

As a direct response to the world's growing physical and political instability, Valoran's key magicians – including many powerful summoners – came to the conclusion that conflicts needed to be resolved in a controllable and systemic way. They formed an organization called the League of Legends, whose purpose was to oversee the orderly resolution of political conflict in Valoran. Housed in the Institute of War, the League would be given the authority by Valoran's political entities to govern the outcomes of the organized conflict they would administer.

The League resolved that all major political conflict would be settled through the use of specially prepared arenas strategically located throughout Valoran. Summoners representing a particular political allegiance would each call forth a champion; the champions, leading mindless minions generated by novice summoners manipulating a Nexus, would fight to achieve the objective of the arena they were in. The most common victory condition of a battle arena would be to destroy the opposing faction’s Nexus. These arenas are collectively referred to as "The Fields of Justice".


 :uhrr:


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Maven on September 07, 2014, 07:33:49 AM
All the lore and story are afterthoughts -- unlike in Blizzard games where there is some hint of importance from fans and total disownment from the developers, they TRULY don't matter here because the point are the mechanics and the visual style. I don't think they ever made a claim to gravitas or relevance with their lore / story / characters. It's all fun.


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Kail on September 07, 2014, 03:19:54 PM
3. The idea of the summoner was dumb.

I'm not going to claim it's perfect, but it was at least an attempt to make the lore gel with the nonsense RTS mechanics.  But it got in the way of telling our generic war story about the good kingdom and the bad kingdom and how they had a fight, so it had to go.  Mostly I'm just annoyed that they're getting rid of basically all the lore they've done for this game.  I really hate it when people dick with the established fiction just because they can, it invalidates the entire point of having a cohesive setting in the first place if you're just going to change it every five seconds.

If they have something better that they're going to replace it with, then we could have an argument either way: I personally really hate when story gets retconned and consider it one of the biggest mistakes you can make in fiction (right up there with "I guess it was all just a dream"), and this is one of the biggest retcons I've ever seen.  But if it were being replaced with something amazing, maybe you could argue "worth it."  But it's not going to be, it's just going to be even more generic soap opera fantasy, because having to write around the unique elements of our universe is hard, guys.

I don't think they ever made a claim to gravitas or relevance with their lore / story / characters. It's all fun.

The game as a whole, yeah, doesn't give a shit about it (as far as I can tell).  But the lore team is constantly making these claims.  Every time a character's story is changed, and people bitch about it (because they always do), the lore team pulls out the whole "this is part of a rich tapestry, trust us, we've got a lot in store I can't share with you but I think you'll like it, knowing wink" and then for a year nothing happens.

Shit like this:
"The background we’d created to explain in-game action was ultimately restricting the potential narrative development of the game’s defining characters."
"At a very broad level, we’ve decided to push League’s story beyond its original focus on explaining in-game action and forge a new narrative path for Runeterra"
"Exploring champions’ backstories and motivations beyond what you see in the game doesn’t mean they’ll suddenly start feeling like different characters; what it does do is offer a huge spectrum of options for fleshing out personalities and deepening connections."

And so on.

If lore is REALLY not something that they care about in this game (and that's a valid decision, Dota 2 does just fine with basically no consistent story) then at a minimum they should stop dicking with the lore they already have.


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Johny Cee on September 07, 2014, 07:06:22 PM
Few points:

1. "Lore" means "shit." "Lore" is only lore, as opposed to backstory, dialog, characterization, etc, when it sucks.

2. Their lore has been awful - not only is it dumb and irrelevant, but poorly written, often with typos and grammar / spelling issues.

3. The idea of the summoner was dumb. It takes you out of the character by saying that rather than being the character you play as a being controlling them. It's also dumb how the character talk to you (Sona: "Only you can hear me summoner") and how the fiction of the game is that you are what, some sort of god, that controls these beings?

When you play LoL you say "I'm playing as Sona" not "I'm playing as a being controlling Sona." The whole concept was dumb.

4. What the fuck was the original story of League of Legends. What is the League? I have no idea. Why are these people fighting? What are the fields of justice? I have no clue and I've played the game a ton.
---

My understanding is that they are getting rid of the idea of summoners, the league and all that shit and just making it that people are fighting each other. And trying to focus more on character quotes, animations, and other in-game stuff and less on paragraphs of poorly written lore text. Sounds good to me. (But their lore department is terrible so I'm sure they'll fuck it up somehow)

Another way to look at it:

Riot might have realized they are leaving quite a bit of money on the table by NOT having some kind of narrative backstory and lore with an expandable narrative.  For instance, Wizards of the Coast.  They sell you RPGs and MtG cards and license out video games, but they also churn out novels, manga, comics, tie-ins, and all that other shit which does bring in some serious dough.  It made guys like Salvatore a millionaire, and I'm sure he got the short end of the stick on his early novels.  Or Warhammer/Black Library.

With how popular LoL is, it really is a failure that they haven't leveraged those potential customers into buying a bunch of manga, novels, or whatever.  There really are plenty of decent to good authors that are willing to do work-for-hire tie-in products for a nice paycheck...  Moorcock wrote a Dr Who adventure, Jeff Vandermeer wrote a fucking Predator tie-in, etc.




Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Margalis on September 07, 2014, 08:33:33 PM
I do agree that constantly changing the lore is bad. It doesn't even matter if the changes are good or bad, if you keep changing the lore you send the message that it's totally disposable. It's not even retcons - retcons try to change things in kludgy but logically consistent way. The LoL lore changes are just "nope, it's flat out different now with no explanation."


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Fordel on September 07, 2014, 10:26:53 PM
Other then Anime Cat Girl does Anime Attack at the end, it was pretty fun to watch.


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: HaemishM on September 08, 2014, 12:17:36 PM
League of Legends has lore? And people pay attention to it? FFS, WHY? Are there easter eggs in the lore that give you hidden buffs?


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Rasix on September 08, 2014, 12:36:35 PM
League of Legends has lore? And people pay attention to it? FFS, WHY? Are there easter eggs in the lore that give you hidden buffs?

Character skins with sunglasses get -1 damage to Leona's Solar Flare.  :awesome_for_real:


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Goumindong on September 08, 2014, 03:58:27 PM
League of Legends has lore? And people pay attention to it? FFS, WHY? Are there easter eggs in the lore that give you hidden buffs?

Character skins with sunglasses get -1 damage to Leona's Solar Flare.  :awesome_for_real:

Ninja's on the same team get a stacking -1 HP hit point buff.


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Fordel on September 08, 2014, 04:07:57 PM
I hate the argument of "lawl who cares, does it give buff lolol?1?1", people clearly DO give a shit or you wouldn't see all the fucking fanart and cosplay and etc. If League wants to make their setting/lore/story better, good. I wish them great success in that goal. (will they succeed? /shrug )


Like, what's the difference between TF2 and the half dozen bro-shooters flowing around? It ain't just mechanics.


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Draegan on September 09, 2014, 06:02:34 AM
People make fanart and cosplay because the like doing that stuff. I don't really think they care about the lore specifically.

Who cares really?


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Kail on September 09, 2014, 06:47:31 PM
People make fanart and cosplay because the like doing that stuff. I don't really think they care about the lore specifically.

Who cares really?

Lots of people "care," but there's a whole range between the kind of caring that results in a few forum posts or some fanart and the kind of caring that results in a news anchor saying "Police are looking for a suspect..."


Title: Re: League of Legends Cinematic: A New Dawn
Post by: Maven on September 10, 2014, 06:30:48 PM
I for one support more LoL cosplay, if only because a lot of high quality costumes (and attractive females) come out of it.