League Of Legends: Yasuo's Origins And Creation Process

During the process of creating the often-banned Yasuo, the samurai went through a couple of different modifications regarding his background and his abilities before the Yasuo we know today was created, according to the recent Origins post about Yasuo.

Yasuo was invented to do the samurai archetype justice. League writer Bananaband1t explained that while the game already had a talented swordsman in the form of Master Yi, they wanted to create a Ronin character, a samurai with no master. Yasuo's story begins with the warrior being tasked with guarding his master, a duty he abandons to join a fight, a strategy many of Yasuo's teammates are likely familiar with. He later returns to find that his master has been slain by a wind technique, leading many to blame him for the murder.

Though Yasuo is forced to kill his brother, Yone, when the sibling comes to bring him to justice, that wasn't always the initial plan. The first version of the lore involved Yone killing himself after realizing Yasuo's innocence, but writers were concerned that players wouldn't find that story as believable, nor was it as climactic as an epic fight.

Yasuo's appearance and voice also went through similar changes; both his looks and sound were first quite rugged and tired-sounding to reflect his long quest for redemption, but the team behind his creation was again worried that the tones and visuals wouldn't make as much sense if you weren't familiar with his lore.

And as for his name, Yasuo almost wasn't Yasuo. His name roughly translates to "peaceful one" in Japanese, but other names that were considered for the champ included Porah, Sho, Tachikaze, Hayate, Fuujin, Ken, Doc, Fen, and Seb.

But what about in-game when it comes to Yasuo's abilities and his roles? His Steel Tempest stab was pretty much the plan from the start, and his Wind Wall was Yasuo's way of gaining breathing room as a melee carry, but his ult wasn't always connected to his knockup. It first began as a straight dash that stunned everyone in a line with damage applied at the end.

He was also never designed to be a top lane champ, even if that's where he finds himself often. Devs thought that it'd be unhealthy for the game if he were a split-pusher instead of a teamfighter. A shift to Yasuo players maxing E instead of Q and changes to AD items made him perform the top lane role much better than devs had anticipated.

Bananaband1it closed out the Origins story by saying that the team is still looking into ways they can make Yasuo more fightable while still keeping his samurai fury intact, a change that'll maybe help Yasuo get through a ban phase every now and then.

You can check out the full Origins story here and read up on Yasuo's lore here.