The latest Riot Forge title, The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story, is a beat-’em-up story of monarchy, magic, and revolution. It really works nicely as a standalone expertise; anybody who has ever dabbled within the fantasy style will acknowledge its depictions of fearsome dragons and a band of noble rebels. However for League of Legends followers, The Mageseeker is an absolute treasure trove of lore that resolves drained plot hooks and units up new, scintillating mysteries.
“After we launched our first sport Moonlighter, apparently some folks at Riot had been taking part in it rather a lot,” says Javi Gimenez, co-founder and CEO of developer Digital Solar, in a name with Polygon. Riot inspired Digital Solar to pitch a sport to Riot Forge within the League universe. The crew at Digital Solar began to iterate on a protagonist who may combine and match talents from different champions — or maybe a squad with completely different loadouts of talents.
Shortly after brainstorming began, Riot launched Sylas, a Demacian insurgent mage who steals spells from casters round him. “After we noticed that champion, we have been like, ‘OK – this can be a match made in heaven,’” says Gimenez. The Mageseeker was in improvement for 4 years, which signifies that Digital Solar was capable of craft Sylas’ post-launch story in a comparatively remoted sandbox.
“Sylas is a problem as a result of he’s not an everyday hero — he’s an anti-hero. He’s not a pleasant man. That’s fantastic, as a result of we’re allowed to [have Sylas] do issues an everyday hero wouldn’t do, however we additionally must be very cautious that he’s not doing too many horrible issues,” says Sara Costa, design director at Digital Solar. The tip result’s a sport that reveals Sylas as having been proper concerning the Mageseekers. Is he additionally proper concerning the Demacian aristocracy, or is he simply an accelerationist with no brakes? Time will inform. We do know that Sylas stays an antagonist even after the occasions of this sport, although, as a result of The Warriors cinematic takes place post-The Mageseeker.
Demacia is likely one of the oldest locations in League of Legends lore; it was initially positioned as a shining medieval monarchy, the antithesis to the brutal skullduggery and assassinations of Noxus. Through the years, because the lore moved extra in direction of depicting various shades of grey, Demacia misplaced a few of its shine. The dominion developed into a spot based as a sanctuary from magic, with a state group of Mageseekers trying to find harmful mages and imprisoning them.
The Mageseekers make good villains to oppose an anti-hero. “The Mageseekers existed after we began making the sport, however Riot didn’t have huge plans for them,” says Gimenez. “So we began creating them.” The group of misguided patriots now contains some ruthless monsters (of the metaphorical kind) who use old-school alchemy and mad science to create monsters (of the literal kind) in an try and “remedy” magic. Their motives are acquainted and could be mapped onto real-life teams, whereas their strategies are a bit of extra fantastical, with vats stuffed with alchemical experiments. The Mageseekers additionally work to govern mages into believing that solely the state can management their powers.
This oppression of mages was established back with the Lux comic back in 2019, and it led to some fascinating (however underdeveloped) conflicts in League’s lore. Lux Crownguard is a lightweight mage. Will her older brother Garen stand by her facet, or will he give in to his nation’s prejudices? What do champions like Sona, a musical mage raised in a noble home, take into consideration their society? Prince Jarvan is courting a half-dragon, Shyvana — isn’t that awkward in a nation that persecutes magic and outsiders in equal measure? These conflicts stretched out for years, with characters like Garen and Jarvan IV caught in a clumsy limbo between hero and oppressor.
The awkwardness was compounded as extra lore began to come back out, set in a time interval after The Mageseeker’s story. Earlier than this sport, we simply didn’t have the complete image. Its marketing campaign satisfyingly solutions tons of questions on Lux, Jarvan, Shyvana, Garen, and Sylas. We even be taught extra about Morgana and Kayle, who have been worshiped as twin Gods within the early days of Demacia’s historical past. There’s additionally a tie-in comedian, Katarina, revealed on Webtoon that goes into Garen and the Noxian murderer Katrina Du Couteau, which serves as a prequel to The Mageseeker.
The Mageseeker reveals that League of Legends is able to establishing fascinating conflicts, and that Riot Forge video games are capable of resolve them in a wide range of methods. The Ruined King, one other League of Legends spinoff title from Riot Forge, is rather more entwined within the lore and timeline of the League universe. The Mageseeker is a extra contained sport, with no plans for sequels or DLC. It’s a deal with for long-time League followers that provides perception on a number of particular mysteries in a single area, and now it feels just like the setting of Demacia will lastly be capable of transfer ahead to some new and much more intriguing conflicts.