We spoke to developers at Riot Games to discuss the title-spanning Sentinels Of Light event, touching on how the event was created and if fans can expect similar events in the future.
For League Of Legends in particular, the Sentinels Of Light event added a branching visual novel, pitting players against Viego as he tries to take over the world.
For fans of last year’s Spirit Blossom event – which also came in the form of an in-client visual novel – Sentinels Of Light may have looked familiar. Speaking to the similarity, Paul Perscheid – Communications Lead at Riot Games – told us:
“Both events were designed to give players a firsthand perspective into the event, but for different reasons. The Spirit Bonds system in Spirit Blossom was structured to let players get to know Ionian Spirits, so we created a design centered around individual characters as different ‘sections’ of the event.”
“Sentinels is telling a story about Runeterra, so we created a chapter-based design where players interact with different champions as each one plays their part in the overall narrative.”
Unlike Spirit Blossom, however, the Sentinels Of Light event touched more on all of Riot’s titles, including Ruination skins for Valorant and further content for Teamfight Tactics and Legends Of Runeterra. Perscheid describes this event as going “a step further”, with the aim of connecting “some of those shared experiences together.”
“This is a bigger approach than we’ve taken with events before, so we wanted to make sure all our players could be a part of it.”
Making an event that involves tying together different playerbases comes with its challenges. Perscheid confirmed that the event was difficult to coordinate between different teams within Riot Games, saying “each of our games participated, and within each game, different teams joined the effort.”
“Taking into account all those groups, as well as teams we partnered with outside of Riot, hundreds of people were involved. It took well over a year to align on the idea and then build everything out.”
The question on many fans minds – particularly in League Of Legends, where there’s a wealth of lore still left to explore – is if players can expect to see another crossover event of this size.
Ryan Mireles, Lead Champion Producer, steps in to explain that the entire process of creating Sentinels Of Light was “pretty taxing on the teams” involved, so Riot “will evaluate the results and decide if it’s something we want to pursue again in the future. We would want to make sure it was worth it before committing to doing it more or less in the future.”
This could mean trouble for the future of Riot events, as multiple threads in the League Of Legends Reddit have leveled criticism at perceived lore inconsistencies, missing characters and a lighter style of writing that didn’t fit the serious nature of the event.
As Sentinels Of Light moves to wrap up, Riot has announced that the company will be “taking the week of August 2nd off to disconnect and recharge”.
In other news, we also spoke to LEC caster Daniel Drakos to find out how music became such a defining aspect of Europe’s League Of Legends scene.
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