Is the game's story canon ?

[Your Cat From 1000m Away]

Just finished the game, Is it canon to the main game's lore or is it spin-off ?

[kolorotur]

Seems so.
https://twitter.com/RiotL4T3NCY/status/1460656443065974784

[skullymex]

More or less, but 'canon' is kind of a fluid thing with league. I wouldn't count on them working anything from this game into their other products.

[Rugged Lemmings]

Yeah, pretty much what skully said.

During the Spirit Blossom event when Yone came out, the cinematics they put out for it (Yasuo's in particular) leads right up to the start of Ruined King with Yasuo and Ahri on a boat headed for Bilgewater.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4L0OkSrsI8

[kukuhimanpr]

^skullymex is right. Riot often treat the canonicity of many runeterra universe lore in a hands off manner... considering the huge numbers of different writers and artists that work on the franchise as a whole... which could result in lore discrepancies and wildly different artsyles interpretations of one characters...

canonically, riot meant to release this game before the Rise of the Sentinel (also called Sentinels of Light) grand event (which is also a visual novel Self Insert OC simulator...). but due to many problems (especially the 2019-2020 pandemic...), this game' canonicity and story didn't connect right with the RoS event... and many fans were displeased with the writing quality in RoS... not to mention how some important characters' personalities such as yorick were retconned badly...

also had to add my personal complaint with RoS... though i'm just gonna talk about ahri's involvement in this game and RoS...

ahri isn't present at all in RoS... (though in hindsight, thats a good outcome considering the writing quality in RoS...) which is so stupid, because ahri in this game was the one person that manage to extract the worst memories of the simpy-yandere-misty-spoiled-king-viego and turn it into a memory bomb that greatly weakened viego in the final battle of this game, thereby allowing MF and illaoi to seal viego inside gangplank's unique buhru talisman.

in this game's ending, ahri went back into the shadow isle to search for more traces of her ancestors, and perhaps help maokai restore the Island's nature to its former glory in the pre-blessed Isle Era, and might be also to secure the many artifacts in the vaults of shadow Isle from thresh (he'll eventually return, and ahri would have personal vendetta against thresh due to thresh defiling her ancestors artifacts in the vesani vault to be used in his experiments of screwing around the minds of his prisoners for lulz) or other malicious parties. But then after that... Ahri were not present at all and not mentioned at all in the whole RoS event. probably due to the many reasons that cause the event's lore consistency and writing quality to be so... disastrous...

For me, I understand that ideally according to Riot's official timeline, Ahri should be present in RoS, considering her importance in this game, so she would be very, very involved in the world scale 2nd round war with viego+thresh's mistwalker armies. fortunately, riot understands that the RoS Event was a disaster, and they've promised to be better in handling future Runeterra Lore Events... but of course we all were still left in indecisiveness when we want to figure out how's the full details of the lore connection between this game and the RoS event... so... i suggest to just make your own headcanon for this game's lore connection to RoS...

[Your Cat From 1000m Away]

Wow, thanks for a very good read, a very informative summary of the lore !
But look like Riot is not going anywhere with this and that's so sad.
Well, at least I can still looking forward to Arcane Season 2.
And Arcane is not canon to the main game.

So, in the end, just like you guys said Riot not only has 200 years of game balance experience but also has 200 years of writing lore experience !
99% of their budget goes to making skins, LOL.

[kukuhimanpr]

i'm not into arcane series' piltover-zaun politicking rebel-tyrant overdone story archetype. and that series from what i've seen (on the surface) seems to only focus on those 2 regions. unless riot started another global-scale crisis event that requires fans to dive into arcane lore because its lore is important to understand the event's story or something like that...

yeah... riot has been too drunk on drinking cash rivers from promoting alternate-universe skins that doesn't have anything to do with the main storyline of runeterra and its champions' story developments themselves... worst examples being soraka's order of the banana skin (its the stupidest skin ever imo), and both KDA and star guardians AU which is basically a spinoff franchises to milk the k-pop and magical girls fandom forever...

heck... I'm still so salty that riot prioritizes promoting ahri's AU versions of the KDA and Star guardians nonsense so much, that they neglect original ahri's heartbreaking story and character developments (while still not syncing her LoL version's flirty vixen old quotes with her much more contemplative and sorrowful quotes from the new canon vastaya vesani lore version from her short stories, this game and probably the card game LoR to some extent.

see what i mean? even ahri, one of the most popular runeterran character since ever (close competition to jinx, which i never understand where the appeal come from) gets treated so wrongly by riot for so long (riot be like hey original ahri, just do your thing^_^ (being abused by LoL players everyday), we're too busy planning the next concerts and alternate skins for your not-you-but-also-you KDA+SG clones, so buhbye...)

that is just one example of riot not listening to fans clamoring for more proper lore developments of the champions. but since the popularity of arcane series, the RoS disaster, fans loving this game's story plus character developments and Riot's promising to be better with the lore stuff and them working on the upcoming Riot MMO... I'm quite hopeful that Riot has learned their lesson and knew they must now treat the lore stuff seriously.

[Your Cat From 1000m Away]

Yeah man, I remember the old Ahri love Wukong or something and then the new Ahri kinda on the same "Ship" with ... Yasuo.
Poor Ahri being milked by Riot but when they are done they replace her with Jinx.
I remember Ahri was the "Cover girl" of League just like Chun-Li to Street Fighter but now it's all about Jinx. I think the reason is that they can't decide which story to take for Ahri, they afraid they would up set the KDA/ Star Guardian fans.

By the way, I think next season of Arcane, Noxus will be involved because they introduce Noxus mid season 1.

I'm waiting for League fighting game, it look kinda fun. But I'm not expecting it to be EVO or something big tho.

[kukuhimanpr]

that ahrixwukong is a totan fanon made pairing. and there is no official story about ahri and wukong knowing each other. even in the vastayan update. besides... ahri would get quickly bored of wukong's goku like fighting addict persona. in one of her legends of runeterra quote, the mourned one asked what ahri fears, and ahri said she dislike dull companions... so true~)

and ahri is most likely just best friend with yasuo since even if ahri and yasuo had greatly helped each other forgive their past and move forward with their own paths, ahri still didn't trust her own control over her own power to not devour the essence of any person who stays too close with her for prolonged times. she's still had a long way to go in her quest to learn her vesani tribe's way to fully control her power (♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thresh... you really deserve your unbound skin's uglyness...)

yeah, jinx is totally replacing ahri as the poster girl for runeterra marketing department. even if noxus is involved in arcane season 2 i'd still just read the synopsis since i detest noxus as much as i dislike the old summoner+institute of war canon lore.

I'm also waiting for that project L fighting game too... not interested in the multiplayer competitive shenanigans, just want to see how riot will connect this game to the project L' stories for ahri and other champions. its surely is a much better medium for story telling than the original LoL moba nonsense. since tekken, street fighter, mortal kombat and the like shows that their genre does a pretty good in showing the quirky personalities of their characters.

[Your Cat From 1000m Away]

Yep, that's totally me too. I play fighting games single player to enjoy the story and jumping around with my favorite characters.

I know Ahri will not want to be with Yasuo but Yasuo on the other hand is totally into Ahri according to the last dialogue at the ending of Ruined King when they are in the bar.
God, the guy is lonely for so long he deserves those fluffy tails, LOL !

[kukuhimanpr]

yasuo at the very least, owes so much to ahri for giving him chance to forgive his past and regain his will to live. after defeating yone's apparition in windrake isle, he said to ahri that his mistakes and regrets cost him a lifetime, while ahri's were like many life times... (hundreds of years or more). but yasuo realize he still needs to help braum return to freljord and rescue riven from noxus because he forgave riven for accidentally killing his master and want riven to be free to choose her own paths. he did promise to ahri he'd catch up with her again someday in maokai's grove/vesani vault, so they could have met again sooner in RoS if RoS was done properly (with riven probably being added to the gang). sigh... i can only imagine an ideally written RoS scenario where ahri become like healer+therapist+loremaster for the sentinel of light and blessed isle restoration project while yasuo becomes ahri's bodyguard again after rescuing riven.

all this talk makes me realize, that ahri and yasuo got the most drastic character developments in this game. Pyke resumes his job as the abyss' batman, but with extra personal vendetta against viego. Braum is still braum, but with more heroic tales and friends as he returns home to freljord with maokai's cure. MF is still going sasuke over gangplank... but with more RAGE to gangplank sympathizers due to viego's influence and most likely being even more stressed as bilgewater governor (bilgewater scums are like 90% of its populations... and with gangplank returning to incite more rebellion... mf is. illaoi becomes generally less zealous about her faith and more open to other faiths while still doing her protector thing in bilgewater... so... yeah... funnily, enough ahri and yasuo get the best endings from this game... despite this game emphasizing MF and illaoi as the main protagonists... but i'm not complaining, ahri and yasuo's stories are just much more compelling than those two anyway.

[Your Cat From 1000m Away]

You just remind me about MF, she is another character that Riot can't decide which path to take.
They can't decide if she is the sexy baby doll walking like she is on the catwalk of a beauty contest or ... being this strong female leader in Ruined King.

They have to completely re-design Miss Fortune for this game, LOL.

[kukuhimanpr]

i'm not a fan of mf due to her character being stuck forever in a ragey sasuke type vengeance state against gangplank. and considering that riot never allow any of runeterra champions to be killed/destroyed and thrown away in any of its canon lore, so she'll always be stuck on that gangplank loop. also i hate pirates. i can't understand the idea of romanticizing pirates, since they are one of the scummiest type of criminals in real world history. the line between pirates and sailors are always blurred, so its hard to differentiate these two. mf herself is a mix between bounty-hunter-sailor-pirate-governor, so I still find her unlikeable.

regardless, mf's canon state herself are stuck between the temperamental caribbean governor in this game and RoS, or the seductive bounty hunter in LoL and LoR. riot probably be like "eh, let the fans decide which canon version they accept, we'll just focus on making more skins for $$$"

[Your Cat From 1000m Away]

And we better not talk about Seraphine, that champion is just ... "Out of place".

[kukuhimanpr]

ugh... seraphine is the same as zoe, yordles, poros and the silly faeries... they feel out of place in the serious gritty and dark nature of most runeterra stories... viego and thresh lose almost all their dignities in the RoS story because they have to work with vex... a yordle who is basically a parody of every emo goth teenagers that didn't care about anything except being depressed for depression's sake... herp derp no wonder the story lose its drama power everytime those kind of characters got involved because of they're basically out-of-place-4th-wall-breaking-clowns armored with infinite layers of plot armors...

[Your Cat From 1000m Away]

As I remember Seraphine was created for KDA, but they have to find a way to bring her into the main game so ... the rest is history.

The same thing happened to Dota 2, their new characters were top-tier until they put Marci from the Dota 2 Animation Netflix series into the game ...

Those are example of a video games want to be "Multimedia", putting every piece of media they have into the main game and then it falling apart because the story, the lore, the world are not consistent with each other because the writers of the other media didn't research the source material very well.

The only thing done this kind of stuff really well was Cyberpunk 2077: Edge Runner. That series tight very well with the game, not having much of the "Canon-issue".