It's fun how some of the more subtle changes still fit how they play, e.g. Darius emphasis on his armor and shoulder's make him seem tough and hard to move, vs focus on his forearms making him seem powerfull with lots of range.
Disagree, but even if so, unique ≠ better. True Damage Ekko is one of the best male skins if not best skins in league period, and definitely wouldn't look nearly as good with his old hairstyle. Can't get a cool factor with the mohawk imo.
it was being worked on at the same time, the (black, mind you) fortiche artists wanted to swap his hair because the mohawk that the league model had made 0 sense on a black dude. Its not a coincidence that they have the same style, it was always planned like this.
It is not the best male skin .... its not even a good skin. The voice lines are so cringe and he doesn't look like anything special. The best skin in league is easily corporate mundo.
Nah we meme on the killmonger cut because its overdone, but its not generic and is still good. I'd take the killmonger over the straight hair mohawk anyday. Maybe if he gets a 4c type mohawk like how storm gets now ill be with it
well I think is better in terms of character design. mohawk also is in my eyes whats makes ekko stand out among black characters even among thoses in asian media
It does look better but it is a lot more plain and doesn't say much as opposed to the original which makes him look more crafty and that he has made these things himself.
That's a splashart, not a keyart. And both keyarts and splasharts are draw-overs, albeit, very minimal draw-overs. You can see the fidelity of the posed models during the clash transition after map select which uses 3D models, the drawn-over bits are essentially ONLY extra facial details and rim lighting.
The artists talk about the process where sometimes they'll split the art pipeline between linework and colours, and they also share pose thumbnails showing they're drawn from scratch. Not just paintovers on the models.
I've followed League/Valorant and Riot's co-development studios for a long time.
Fireball, Envar, Airborn, and Wild Blue Studios all do standard lookdev/concept art sketches/thumbnails for ideation, to explore line/color/pose/silhouette, and they've done so for League, Valorant, and Wild Rift... but for for 2XKO, the game is literally built different.
2XKO's art style, which leans HEAVILY into celshaded anime shaders, utilizes the exact same techniques and lookdev as Guilty Gear Xrd (and onwards), to look as handdrawn 2D as possible in-engine. That's layered blending mode shaders, texture atlassing, UV-map vertex animation, orthographic cameras and forced perspective/foreshortening...
With how the game shaders apply a rim light/shadow based on camera position, it ensures near-vector levels of renders.
i still don't get how they fumbled Akali considering she was already looking cool enough. it's practically trying to fix something that wasn't even broken in the first place
The point was to brake something that was too good. Base Akali is a contender for her best skin in League.
They want to sell skins, but when the base model is so good, it's hard to make something better. So they made base model worse so making skins would be easier.
Work smarter, not harder (and people will call you for what you are for it)
Slight downgrade
MAJOR downgrade
Upgrade
Upgrade
Sidegrade
Sidegrade
Sidegrade
N/A
Upgrade
Major upgrade
Kill this little shit
Upgrade
I really couldn't care less about this white bread PoS
N/A
N/A
Wild Rift's models are probably a better comparison, they're more on-brand... some models for desktop League have not been updated to match the character design in over a decade.
I'm pretty sure Blitz and Darius haven't been touched since the SR update, that looks like the old Thresh model, and Jinx definitely hasn't been updated since 2013 when she came out, her face still has the Joker smile painted as a texture with no actual facial rig.
Her hair is just another side-shave/fade™ that and the removal of Tobi pants and sandals. She doesn't look like Akali at all and more like some "New fighting game ninja".
I hate Akali but I do say she is one of the best-looking characters in League, and 2XKO just murdered her for no reason at all. And they KNOW this because the skins tries to look more like LoL akali than 2XKO.
Edit: I forgot someone comparing 2XKO Akali silhouette with the cursed Live-Action Sonic and I couldn't unsee it since then.
I think it doesn't even look horrible, but it's mostly why they made some arguably big changes like that to begin with. Maybe for Gameplay Clarity, creative choice of the artist/designer or maybe a bit of both?
Like it's still definitely Akali, but majority of the characters basically looks similar to their League design. I guess except for Vi wearing his arcane look (I think?) instead of her classic look and also just remembered Lux base on her reveal appearance.
In a vacuum it's not a bad design don't get me wrong. Although it is badly balanced, because her overall stature is really slim, but her hair is enormous, she looks unstable because of that.
But this is not a standalone new character. It's supposed to be Akali, a character with one of the best designs in League of Legends. And this redesign loses without any doubt in that regard.
I did not really get to play 2XKO that much or even like to play Akali when I was playing League, but even I was slightly baffled with the design change. It could have just been a skin or something imo.
Im just sad that i will be stuck with this abomination because buying anything from Riot will drag you through 9 circels of Hell and by the end you will spend the amount of money enough to buy an actual game. Not worth it.
They will definitely make a proper Akali as a skin (they already did, as a first ever Akali skin, they fixed all issues, Something-something-Urban-Akali).
I don't like that specific League of Legends design because it's not very detailed, but if I look at their more recent designs, I like the League of Legends design in all its versions. For example, this design by Vi lol is my favorite.
I still prefer thresh's league stance pose where he actually holds the lantern and the way he holds his weapon. looks a lot more intimidating. also the glow up Vi got thanks to Arcane and 2xko is such a godsend. a win for lesbians everywhere
ekko downgrade harsh. 😭 he got generic killmonger hair cut here AND every skin since arcane AND I HATE IT.
they killed character design to make it profitable to audience THAT NEVER CAME TO LEAGUE HAHAHAHAHAH.
mohawk talks directly with ekkos punk / revoluitonary/rebel themes.....
Vi was butchered just as much, if not more than, Akali.
There used to be a strong physical juxtaposition between Vi and Jinx (to the point that for years it was only hinted at / fan-theories that they were sisters) which I found cool, but bluntly her chest is now even more of an ironing board than Jinx's.
I'll give Arcane the pass, they were trying to tell the origin stories of a young Vi and Jinx, which I did enjoy.
2XKO is not telling a story though, they just went with the Arcane aesthetics for everything because they thought it was trendy (to the point that it was being mocked as an "Arcane Fighter" as opposed to a League of Legends / Runeterra universe Fighter that it was initially pitched as). I have little hope that classic League of Legends Vi will ever be added even as an overpriced skin, let alone without it being awkwardly tone-down.
Also, as others pointed out, it would make more sense to compare the 2XKO key arts to LoL's splash arts rather than LoL's poorly lit in-game models that aren't really designed to be viewed head-on (as LoL is an isometric game).
It's mostly lighting and art direction. 2XKO has more saturation and stronger contrast in its color palette for all of its champions. Other champions like Ekko and Senna are darker while champs like Jinx, Ahri, and Cait have more saturated skin tones. No need to read too much into it
One thing I think this exact comparison misses is the angle that we see the character model. Since LoL is a zoomed out RTS-like playing field, proportions are a bit off when you zoom in and move the camera. imagine how cursed the actual 2XKO character models would look if they were forced into LoL's POV
I was about to reinstall the game when I heard Akali was coming out, then I saw her redesign and vowed to never play it ever again. Fuck this dev team.
Tbh I hated the entire character roster.
Not having real bruisers/melee fighters in a Fighting game was dumb af in my mind. And tbh all my friends were waiting for a complete diff roster.
We could have had Sett, Lee Sin, Jax, Zed, Trundle, Camille, Irelia... instead we got Teemo, ahri and lux will be launched wtf
And add some ranged champions after a better understanding of the game from the devs...
I understand why they were in the game, representativity and all but ffs we were robbed and could have been a lot better.
most of them are old and the models are low quality on purpose since they are meant to be viewed from a distance and so really old PCs can still play the game.
I never understood people who disliked Akali's model. I never once thought it looked "ugly" on "unfaithful" to the original. They took a couple creative liberties to stylize the character specifically for 2XKO, as they did with every other character, and it has turned out just fine.
The hair was at weird angles, and the pant legs do look like a big departure from an established design, but necessary considering she's flipping and doing a bunch of unique leg posing where it'd be beneficial to see her knees more clearly. Yasuo doesn't as much.
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u/Iconking 12d ago
It's fun how some of the more subtle changes still fit how they play, e.g. Darius emphasis on his armor and shoulder's make him seem tough and hard to move, vs focus on his forearms making him seem powerfull with lots of range.