League of Legends Devs Tease Darker "Creature Champion"

League of Legends has tons of champions, but it’s been a while since we got a truly monstrous [...]

League of Legends has tons of champions, but it's been a while since we got a truly monstrous character or even one who was more creature than human added to the game. Most of the recent releases have been human or humanoid in nature, but Riot Games says it's planning on changing that up next year with a return to what it referred to as a "creature champion" that'll be on the "darker side."

The tease for what's to come in League's champion releases came from a post on the game's site featuring Ryan "Riot Reav3" Mireles, the lead producer of champions. Reav3 spoke about the philosophy behind continuing to make new champions, the themes that drive the characters, how different characters' themes are more popular in certain regions as opposed to others, and many other insights into the champion creation process.

Skipping ahead to the conclusion of the post, we see that Riot's divided champions into three categories: Human, humanoid, and creature. Human examples are obvious while Humanoids include things like Lilia, but creatures can be more diverse since Yuumi and Skarner – two champs with very different themes and demeanors – are both "creatures." A promise for a new creature champion in 2022 was made with it marketed as a "darker" champion, but the producer stressed that the commitment doesn't mean we'll get a creature champ each year.

"We have plans to make a new creature champion in 2022 since it's been a while, the last one being Yuumi," Reav3 said. "While it made sense to make a cute creature like Yuumi since the game was lacking in cute creatures, we want the next one to be on the darker side. This doesn't mean we'll do a full creature every year, as they are pretty niche, but we do want to make more non-human champions going forward."

For those wondering about the balance between human and non-human champions and the frequency of the former as far as new champ releases go, Reav3 addressed the dominance of human champions in League lately while talking about Riot's drive to make more "broadly-appealing champions." Human champions naturally are able to represent cultures better than non-humans which is something Riot said it's been striving for with champions like Samira and Viego. That means creatures have taken a backseat to the humans, but we'll at least have one to look forward to sometime in 2022.

0comments