Following an apology from Riot’s development team about LoL’s 2023 cinematic, it’s been revealed that a full cinematic starring Aatrox was planned and scripted but never completed.
For a few years, Riot has made it a tradition to release a cinematic that gets players hyped for the coming League of Legends ranked season. Those getting ready to hit the ranked ladder treated these as a war horn, a battle call to get them hyped for the coming climb.
However, 2023’s cinematic was seen as a disappointment by the LoL community at large. An official apology was issued by the League of Legends team, followed by a video explaining some of League of Legends’ overall development issues through 2022.
In a follow-up Reddit thread where developers chimed in on internal issues, it was revealed that there was a full cinematic planned, one that starred Aatrox. Though it wasn’t completed in time for 2023, we may see it at the start of 2024.
Aatrox was meant to star in 2023 LoL cinematic
The Aatrox ward skin and the presence of his sword in the cinematic led the LoL community to speculate that the champion was meant to be the focus of the cinematic we never got.
Riot Meddler would confirm those suspicions in a Reddit thread and would go on to say that the cinematic we got was a replacement for something they didn’t have the resources to finish. And, while it wasn’t going to be solely based around Aatrox, he was going to play a big part in the story.
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On what happened to the originally planned cinematic, Meddler had this to say: “It was planned, got scripted, we got partway through development. The reason it didn’t get finished is something I can’t share specifics on, and I’m really sorry about that because I know it’s a frustrating answer. I can say I’m very certain we won’t hit the same issue with a cinematic for next year’s season start.”
Riot Meddler share more about the development of Brink of Infinity, notes Aatrox was indeed planned to be featured in the original cinematic pic.twitter.com/JwrBwyBNZu
— Spideraxe (@Spideraxe30) January 13, 2023
Meddler would elaborate on this a bit without giving away any specific details about the development of Brink of Infinity as well as the unnamed and unreleased cinematic-in-progress. Still, he did confirm that what we got was to give the community something other than radio silence after the failed production of the original project.
“It wasn’t intended to be a replacement, or at the same level as a regular cinematic, thinking was it would be better to try something than do nothing.”
He went on to lament their decision, saying that it may “arguably” have been better to release nothing at all. That said, there’s a possibility that 2024’s cinematic will be what they originally planned for this year. And an equal possibility that it’ll be something else entirely, according to Meddler. Only time will tell.