The latest Riot Forge title, The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story, is a beat-’em-up tale of monarchy, magic and revolution. It works well as a standalone experience; anyone who has ever dabbled in the fantasy genre will recognize the depictions of terrifying dragons and a band of noble rebels. But for League of Legends fans, The magician is an absolute treasure trove of knowledge that solves tired plot hooks and sets up new, scintillating mysteries.
“After we released our first game hareapparently some people at Riot played it quite a lot,” said Javi Gimenez, co-founder and CEO of developer Digital Sun, speaking to Polygon. Riot encouraged Digital Sun to pitch a game for Riot Forge in the Competition universe. Digital Sun’s team began iterating on a protagonist who could mix and match skills of other champions – or perhaps a team with different abilities.
Shortly after brainstorming began, Riot released Sylas, a Demacian rebel mage who steals spells from casters around him. “When we saw that champion, we were like, ‘OK – this is a match made in heaven,'” Gimenez says. The magician was four years in development, meaning Digital Sun was able to create Sylas’ post-launch story in a relatively isolated sandbox.
Image: Digital Sun/Riot Forge
Sylas is a challenge because he’s not an ordinary hero – he’s an anti-hero. He’s not a nice guy. That’s fine, because we’re allowed to [have Sylas] doing things that an ordinary hero wouldn’t do, but we also have to be very careful that he doesn’t at a lot of horrible things,” said Sara Costa, design director at Digital Sun. The end result is a game that shows Sylas has been right about the magicians. Is he also right about the Demacian aristocracy, or is he just a gear stick with no brakes? Time will tell. However, we know that Sylas remains an antagonist even after the events of this game because The Warriors movie takes place after the events.The magician.
Demacia is one of the oldest places in League of Legends lore; it was originally positioned as a radiant medieval monarchy, the antithesis of the ruthless trickery and murders of Noxus. Over the years, as the lore evolved more towards depicting different shades of gray, Demacia lost some of its luster. The kingdom evolved into a place founded as a haven for magic, with a state organization of Mageseekers seeking out and imprisoning dangerous mages.
The Mageseekers are perfect villains to counter an anti-hero. “The Mageseekers were around when we started making the game, but Riot had no big plans for them,” says Gimenez. “So we started developing them.” The group of misguided patriots now includes some ruthless monsters (of the metaphorical kind) who use old fashioned alchemy and mad science to create monsters (of the literal kind) in an attempt to “cure” magic. Their motives are familiar and can be assigned to real groups, while their methods are a little more imaginative, with barrels of alchemical experimentation. The Mageseekers also try to manipulate mages into believing that only the state can control their power.
Image: Digital Sun/Riot Forge
This suppression of magicians was established back with the Lux strip back in 2019and it led to some interesting (but underdeveloped) conflicts in Competition‘s lore. Lux Crownguard is a light mage. Will her older brother Garen stand by her side, or will he give in to his country’s prejudices? How do champions like Sona, a musical magician who grew up in a noble house, feel about their society? Prince Jarvan is dating a half-dragon, Shyvana – isn’t that awkward in a land that persecutes magic and outsiders in equal measure? These conflicts lasted for years, with characters like Garen and Jarvan IV caught in an awkward limbo between hero and oppressor.
The awkwardness was exacerbated as more knowledge came out, in a period after that The magician‘s story. We just didn’t have the full picture before this game. The campaign satisfactorily answers numerous questions about Lux, Jarvan, Shyvana, Garen and Sylas. We even learn more about Morgana and Kayle, who were worshiped as twin gods in the early days of Demacia’s history. There is also a tie-in strip, Katarinapublished on Webtoon that delves into Garen and the Noxian killer Katrina Du Couteau, serving as a prequel to The magician.
The magician show that League of Legends can create interesting conflicts and that Riot Forge games can solve them in different ways. The Devastated Kinganother League of Legends spin-off title from Riot Forge, is much more woven into the lore and timeline of the Competition universe. The magician is a more closed game, with no plans for sequels or DLC. It’s a treat for a long time Competition fans offering insight into a few specific mysteries in one region, and now it feels like Demacia’s setting will finally be able to move on to some new and even more intriguing conflicts.