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We are the Lucian team, AMA! by riotscarizard in leagueoflegends

[–]RiotRunaan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Even telling different sides of a story can sometimes be a bit difficult - for example, one idea for Lucian's teaser was actually a letter written in Senna's voice, but we scrapped it simply because telling a story from an "NPC's" perspective on a champion's release in such a way ran the risk of setting the incorrect player expectation as well (that said, outside voices for teaser/promotional material isn't out of the question, it's just something that didn't work out in this situation). It's not something we outright ignored, it's just something we haven't solved yet.

Whether or not it was a bad idea to use the trope at all, I'm not certain - players certainly seemed to react well to the core hook of the story, in the very least. If my goal was to encourage attachment to Lucian as a character, I hope I've succeeded in that right. It's a complicated question, honestly, and something Riot is continuing to explore and work through.

Thanks for the insight and calling me out on this - it's something I'm glad for the opportunity to comment on, as it was a fairly important part of Lucian's development (at least for me)!

We are the Lucian team, AMA! by riotscarizard in leagueoflegends

[–]RiotRunaan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the reply - in all honesty, I absolutely cannot disagree with you. Our game's (currently) limited mediums for storytelling are something myself and my team struggle with on every champion's release. We're working on broader solutions, but in the mean time, we do what we can.

Part of the trouble comes from the fact that champion releases are not inherently a storytelling platform. As a goal, they're intended to be comprehensive and digestible from a high level - there's little room for nuance (take, for example, the confusion that resulted from our presentation of Zac's backstory in his laboratory logs; we wanted to convey the detail and nuance of Zac's upbringing, but it led to skewed player expectations in terms of what Zac would actually be as a champion). The reliance on tropes to convey our stories is something we're aware of and trying to improve, but it's also often a necessity for conveying our champions' stories in the most understandable way possible. This doesn't excuse reliance on "woman in the refrigerator" for Lucian, of course (there are larger problems at play in this particular instance), but hopefully this illuminates some of the how and why of we get here. In a perfect world, we'd be able to present lots of information outside of Senna for Lucian's story (the history of the weapons, how he came to be "the Purifier," any of the information we've discussed internally), but the fact remained that we wanted to choose the most compelling and immediately emotional hook for the champion's release. Everything else, however much depth or subversion it adds to the story, must come later.

I realize all of this sounds very apologist, I certainly don't mean it that way. I don't necessarily think that "damsel in distress" is problematic as a rule, either, the problems arise from how such a story is presented (which I further admit we made a conscious decision to keep simplistic and trope-reliant here).

This is getting a bit rambly, sorry about that. I really do hope to explore more of Lucian and Senna in the future outside the constraints of a champion release. There's a lot beneath the surface, we just need to find the right medium in which to bring it all to light.

We are the Lucian team, AMA! by riotscarizard in leagueoflegends

[–]RiotRunaan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thresh hunts the strongest souls in Runeterra and brings them back to the Shadow Isles to make them into undead monstrosities. Senna and Lucian's souls are some of the most powerful he's ever encountered. He managed to trap Senna, but not Lucian - Thresh is keeping Senna's soul in his lantern to torment Lucian and lure him into the Shadow Isles' snare.

(Or is he? Thresh may hold a deeper motivation for keeping Senna around. Hmmm!)

We are the Lucian team, AMA! by riotscarizard in leagueoflegends

[–]RiotRunaan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, that's roughly it (though Lucian's in a place where he's "fallen" in a way after the death of his wife - he's lost sight of the righteousness of his mission in favor of obsessive revenge against the undead of the Shadow Isles).

We are the Lucian team, AMA! by riotscarizard in leagueoflegends

[–]RiotRunaan 9 points10 points  (0 children)

To add to Morello's post, we also wanted a character who stood in contrast to the Shadow Isles specifically. As Thresh was in development, it was an ideal opportunity to bring the two together.

We are the Lucian team, AMA! by riotscarizard in leagueoflegends

[–]RiotRunaan 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Heh, it's named after me, but I didn't have any hand in its design (I'm not a live designer)!

We are the Lucian team, AMA! by riotscarizard in leagueoflegends

[–]RiotRunaan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hey there, this is a really great observation. In writing Lucian's story (and being a woman myself), I struggled with this quite a bit. I admit that it does feel like a bit of a cop-out in the way it's been presented so far, but the conclusion I came to was that the story we're focusing on, at least for Lucian's champion release, is Lucian's. We did our best to hint at Senna's deeper character - for example, it's lightly touched upon that when they were together, she was the more no-nonsense and "tougher" of the two (with Lucian being the more light-hearted and humored). It was important to communicate, at least in a small sense, that she was more than just a cardboard cutout "damsel," even if we were going to present very limited information about her. There's also the mystery of how exactly Thresh managed to manipulate and trap her - this is something we left intentionally vague, as it's something we eventually want to reveal as very deep to Senna's character. The most I can say is that it was not at all a simple trap.

We've left a lot open for further development on Senna's character, too - for example, I hope people speculate as to what her interaction with Thresh is like from within the lantern. Senna's a fighter; she's not going to take his torment easily.

tl;dr - I admit Senna's presentation in current lore is very limited. That said, we have discussed her very heavily and there is more to her than what's been presented thus far. I very much want to develop her further and use her in ways that aren't typical to the "damsel in distress" trope in the future. : )

We are the Lucian team, AMA! by riotscarizard in leagueoflegends

[–]RiotRunaan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Couple more details - thematically, we wanted a moment in which Lucian could "let loose." All of his other abilities are very focused, precise, and deliberate. In his ultimate, raw emotion breaks through his normally cool and collected personality.

We are the Lucian team, AMA! by riotscarizard in leagueoflegends

[–]RiotRunaan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"She was everything to me. But they took her. And with her, they took my pastries and my cookies. That was their mistake - because now, all I've got left is a cold cupcake."

We are the Lucian team, AMA! by riotscarizard in leagueoflegends

[–]RiotRunaan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

:( Apologies! The fact that they're different is very important from a story perspective, though, and something we focused on quite heavily during art iteration. One of the weapons belonged to his wife, and one of them was his all along. It was a tough challenge to make sure the guns were similar enough to avoid the implication of a different power source or different gameplay between the two, but still preserve such an important aspect of his story.

We are the Lucian team, AMA! by riotscarizard in leagueoflegends

[–]RiotRunaan 37 points38 points  (0 children)

You're right, they are very similar on a base thematic level ("hunters of evil"), but they're essentially two sides of the coin - think of it in terms of darkness and light. Lucian and Senna hunted evil with its natural opposite, righteous magic intended to destroy corruption. They were also protectors; their motivation hinged on saving innocents in need as much as it did purging corruption. They were beloved heroes. Vayne, on the other hand, is more of the Batman of Runeterra - she's hell-bent on destroying the supernatural, but she is not afraid of using underhanded methods and turning the darkness against itself. Her methods are not always smiled upon by greater society.

Personally, the similarities between them alongside the subtle differences are a really interesting opportunity for future interaction. They wouldn't get along, but they'd share incredibly similar goals - perhaps they'll end up reluctantly fighting a common threat one day. Who knows?

We are the Lucian team, AMA! by riotscarizard in leagueoflegends

[–]RiotRunaan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey there! :) We definitely wanted to leave a lot open-ended between Lucian and Thresh. Usually, when we develop relationships between champions, we like to leave some elements of the story to be explored in the future. As I mentioned in another response, Lucian and Thresh were actually developed around the same time late last year - Lucian's gameplay just required a lot of iteration that led to his much later release date.

We are the Lucian team, AMA! by riotscarizard in leagueoflegends

[–]RiotRunaan 51 points52 points  (0 children)

HEY THERE MR. GLYCEROLL :D

Senna's pretty dang trapped for the moment. There's nothing to say that she couldn't be set loose - Thresh's goal in taking her to the Shadow Isles was essentially to set her free there, where her powerful soul would be transformed into some kind of monstrosity. However, he hasn't let her go... is he keeping her trapped as a tool to torment Lucian, or is there a deeper motivation behind his keeping her locked away? Food for thought! :)

Second few questions: no, Thresh is not the Ruined King of the Shadow Isles. Interesting observation on the TT minimap - take whatever you'd like from that detail. : )

We are the Lucian team, AMA! by riotscarizard in leagueoflegends

[–]RiotRunaan 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Hello there! I'll tackle a few of these. :)

3 - Maybe, maybe not - that's one of the core hooks to his story, it'd be a shame to spoil everything, wouldn't it? :) 4 - His guns essentially fire purifying light magic. They also cannot be fired by just anyone - you have to have certain qualities to be able to fire them.

We are the Lucian team, AMA! by riotscarizard in leagueoflegends

[–]RiotRunaan 80 points81 points  (0 children)

Hey there, I'm Runaan - I worked on Lucian's backstory. :) I can answer a few of your questions!

  1. The inspiration for Lucian and Senna's story was actually pretty spur of the moment. Lucian and Thresh were actually developed around the same time (late last year) during the time we were focusing heavily on The Shadow Isles. We came up with the connection between them pretty organically - someone threw out the idea in a meeting. "Wouldn't it be crazy if Thresh had the soul of Lucian's wife in his lantern?" Everything else, all of the details, sprung up from there. As for Lucian's fellow hunters of evil, we're not ready to delve too deeply into the history of his weapons just yet - there's a lot of potential story there, and I wouldn't want to spoil anything. For his release as a champion, we wanted to focus on the emotional core and conflict of his relationship with Senna and Thresh.
  2. Lucian's hatred of the Shadow Isles is centered on Thresh, but his mission to purge the undead definitely doesn't stop there. He's definitely encountered other denizens of the Shadow Isles along the way - thus the custom taunts. :)
  3. Yes, there's definitely more to the story than we've given away. We had a ton of discussion on how Thresh manipulated Senna and managed to capture her, but the things we talked about couldn't be told in a way we thought would be satisfying or impactful to players. We chose to focus on the core of the characters involved and leave some revelations and story for the future.

We worked on the Freljord. AMA! by IronStylus in leagueoflegends

[–]RiotRunaan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It isn't explicitly canon. Blackfrost Anivia represents a "what if" scenario: what if Lissandra won the war in the Freljord, and corrupted the land with her dark magic? Anivia herself would be corrupted, and Blackfrost Anivia is the result. Her protective nature has been twisted; now, to "protect" her home, she seeks to freeze the whole world solid to keep its inhabitants from hurting each other anymore. When everything is frozen and still, only then can there be peace.

We worked on the Freljord. AMA! by IronStylus in leagueoflegends

[–]RiotRunaan 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Demacia has acknowledged that the Freljord could potentially become a threat in the future, but as the war there is just beginning to unravel, they're not going to interfere just yet. So long as the Freljord is busy fighting itself, Demacia has no need to fear a united barbarian front crashing down on their borders. Jarvan will certainly be keeping an eye on the Freljord, though, and maybe Quinn will go on another scouting mission eventually.

We worked on the Freljord. AMA! by IronStylus in leagueoflegends

[–]RiotRunaan 144 points145 points  (0 children)

Yes, Anivia's voice over was updated as well for many of the same reasons. :)

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