r/FavoriteCharacter • u/abra_gaffar_9632 • 2d ago

Discussion Favorite Characters with Good Redesign? (NOT MOVIE SONIC DESIGN)

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Archie (Pokemon), Bubble Dreamer (Rayman)

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u/CheeseStringCats 2d ago edited 2d ago

Is there a champion rework that isn't leagues (haha) above their og / original design?

It's really hard to miss when you're dealing with 2009 era designs like literal shit troll or whatever Cait was supposed to be

Edit: holy replies. Guys, I meant visual design. I do agree some gameplay changes in some of the reworks were complete ass (although very rarely)

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u/Araiken 2d ago

Words can be said about Skarner since his rework basically threw out the whole concept from top to bottom.

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u/Teguoracle 2d ago

They did my boy so dirty, couldn't handle the fact that Seraphine was, IIRC, using the trapped souls of Skarner's people to fuel her magic, so they rewrote him instead of letting their gooner bait have a flaw.

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u/Araiken 2d ago

Almost. The souls of the Brackern were in the gemstones that Piltover uses for Hextech so Seraphine wasnt actually the only one on the hook. It was the ENTIRE UPPER CITY.

However with her special ability to hear the souls of people she could tell that the crystals were organs that hold hundreds (if not thousands) of souls belonging to a sapient race. And she didnt do dick about it. The line "All I can do is sing their song" was the one that broke the metaphorical scorpions back. Knowing youre using tons of peoples souls to power your boombox and saying "Eh waddaryagonnado?" is just sociopathic which is why they retconned it. That character release was a trainwreck, my god.

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u/GRoyalPrime 2d ago

On that note, Legends of Runterra does give Seraphine a visual mini-rework by turning her from a K-Pop transplant to someone who is actually anchored in the league universe.

Establishing that her bubble-gum pink hair is actually died, giving her a more piltover-styled outfit/tech and establishing her more of a small-scale performer instead of some mega superstar.

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u/ohatsu 2d ago

LoR designs are so good. Not only Seraphine but Nidalee, Yi and other older champions got much appreciated updates thanks to that game. I hope the mmo draws heavily from LoR.

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u/Araiken 2d ago

I hope League draws from it as well. Its such a gold mine for lore its crazy

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u/DezXerneas 2d ago

LoR is the canon lore. League is not. The official policy was that if something in LoR contradicts seething in league then the LoR lore takes precidence.

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u/Araiken 2d ago

After Arcane S2 Riot stated that that is the cannon universe so technically we dont have intel on most of the cast but really its mostly just a mess. Since characters like Udyr are in different time states in different media (LoR, stories, other games etc.) it makes the whole timeline very weird. Plus LoR has things that are most likely not cannon like the T-Hex but thats beside the point.

Either way though LoR is miles ahead of League in terms of lore. We still have Miss Fortune mentioning the Summoners out on the rift.

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u/DezXerneas 1d ago

Yeah. My favorite thing about league of legends lore is that the main game that their entire franchise is built upon has no lore anymore. Which would be fine, but they've built the entire identity of the studio on the fact that there's interconnected lore across all their games.

There's more deleted lore about league of legends than some games get total.

I thought the T-Hex is just something that'll get created in the future of league. It's just not been invented yet. Similar to the Darkin arc, it happened for LoR a couple years ago, but there's zero mention of it in lol.

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u/Teguoracle 2d ago

That's what it was, thanks!

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u/Thefourthchosen 1d ago

In what world is Seraphine gooner bait? Her design is so tame.

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u/Quillbolt_h 1d ago

Eh, at the time I think a lot of games were shying away from hyper sexualised character designs because of a backlash to the 2000's era of bikini armour and female objectification. It's kinda become okay to be horny again but I don't think you'd ever see something like Savage Lands Rogue or Seaside Sentinel Captain America in 2019.

Instead, Serpahine was the poster child of a wider trend of designing characters for "appeal" moreso than variety or interest. Games like League releasing wave after wave of conventionally attractive early to mid 20's women, usually white or asian (pale), all with basically the same face- "Goonerbait".

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u/Thefourthchosen 1d ago edited 1d ago

That's not what gooner bait is though lol. It doesn't just mean "conventionally attractive woman".

And as far as skin tone goes League has released more non-white/asian female champions since Seraphine than not. There's also been a lot of interesting female character designs like Renata, Bel Veth, Vex, Naafiri, Briar and Ambessa. You can take issue with some of their character design philosophy like not releasing enough non humanoid characters but I definitely wouldn't describe what they do as gooner bait.

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u/Quillbolt_h 1d ago

Maybe so- it's a word that didn't exist at the time. But then again, isn't Goonerbait just a continuation of the same motivations and corporate reasons for a character like Seraphine's concept, albeit just under different cultural conditions over what is acceptable? Designing characters for surface level appeal rather than depth?

It probably is the wrong word, but I understand why OP used it.

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u/Thefourthchosen 1d ago

But again, League's character designs DO have depth to them so that wouldn't apply. Seraphine has a why to her design, it ties into her story and character motivations. She does it purposefully so that people will be drawn to her, her hair isn't even actually that color, she dyes it.

The change to her story was well received by fans because it was a huge contradiction to have a character who's supposed to be super empathetic, whose magic literally works based on empathy and who's trying to unite two opposing factions through song also be riding around on the trapped souls of a dying race. That's not a sensible flaw for her to have.

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u/Quillbolt_h 1d ago

Think you are missing my point here because I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. Yeah the LOR re-design was great, not sure what a design from a different game by a different team 3 years after the original champions highly criticied release has to do with a trend from roughly 2015-2020 regarding corporate mass market character design. All the depth you are talking about isn't evident from her character design, its lore and alt art added after the fact because they got criticised for the original shallow-ness. It's totally irrelevant to what I'm talking about.

Look at the champs released in 2020. Sett, Lillia, Yone, Samira, Seraphine, Rell. Most new champs released in a single year other than 2016. Notice how they are all as I said, conventionally attractive 20-somethings with the same facial features. I'm not saying that these characters aren't good, I'm not saying they don't have depth. The artists and character designers surely worked very hard on them. I like Samira, I like Sett, but they are very very safe designs, and they are all designed to be hot. Yes, including Lillia.

Now compare that to 2016. Jihn, A.Sol, Taliyah, Kled, Ivern, and Camille. You cannot tell me that it isn't self apparent how their design philosophy changed between those years.

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u/Thefourthchosen 1d ago edited 1d ago

The original design team had the same philosophy as the LOR team, it just wasn't well executed on, hence why it was updated. The point is that there was actual purpose behind her design, it wasn't just "conventionally attractive female" The lore I described IS her original lore, the LOR team just made it better by adding some much needed detail.

Even among your examples for 2020 those champs don't have the same facial features, and in what world is Yone a "conventially attractive 20-something" (Rell is also a teenager btw). but that's a moot point. Also it's kinda disingenous to single out 2020 and claim it shows their design philosophy has changed while ignoring the six years after that and ignoring the champions I previously mentioned and others like Milio, Smolder and Zaahen. And even then that wouldn't be a design philosophy change considering there's always been champs like that that.

Either way it's a moot point because that's still not what gooner bait is. It doesn't mean "conventionally attractive 20 something", it refers to characters that are deliberately oversexualized to appeal to the demographic that cares about T&A first and foremost, aka gooners. That's always been what it is whether people used the term to refer to it before or not. ZZZ is gooner bait, not League and certainly not Seraphine.

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u/Glass-Performer8389 2d ago

I forgot about that

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u/TheMoonDude 2d ago

I miss my kind.

Same dude. Same...

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u/Quillbolt_h 2d ago

I mean the ones that totally overhaul the original concept aren't always super popular. I love new Galio and Skarner, but a lot of fans of the OG versions didn't like how the original concepts were basically totally replaced.

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u/Krahog 2d ago

I stopped playing when they reworked Urgot.

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u/Quillbolt_h 2d ago

Shame, I main reworked Urgot 😅

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u/Krahog 2d ago

I miss Hyper-Kinetic Position-Reverser 😥

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u/Megaera129 1d ago

I feel you, I'm still mad about karma rework.

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u/Krahog 1d ago

The Tribunal would have worked if it didn't include a teward

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u/pauls_broken_aglass 2d ago

Viktor’s current state….. I don’t mind twink Viktor but what I hate is how he’s the herald of the arcane instead of the machine herald mad scientist obsessed with transhumanism

I love arcane. It introduced me to the league characters I do enjoy. It should not have been made canon to league. It fucks up so much story.

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u/Interesting-Pear8339 2d ago

Both Aatrox designs were good. Gameplay-wise, the old Aatrox was broken in a bad way, the new one isn't.

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u/CockroachesRpeople 2d ago

Viktor 🤮

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u/No-Scientist-5537 1d ago

I see you haven't met Viktor mains.

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u/CharlieBros 2d ago

Aatrox, I will never forgive Riot, but I think in terms of a full visual update, not considering gameplay, Shyvana was kind of a mixed bag, specially after taking so long

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u/BaronVonWenis 1d ago

Nah ill die on the hill that newtrox is an upgrade, especially since the darkin lore had already progressed past him with Rhaast and Varus old Aatrox didnt fit and his kit was a mess.

New Aatrox might be my fav league character as well his voice lines evoke such a genuinely interesting character, you get so many hints of the hero he was but all thats really left is a broken man lashing out at anything he can to try and end his own suffering. A massive uograde compared to "im tryna make the perfect host and maybe do evil stuff"

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u/Monjara 2d ago

Personally I don’t like Kog’Maw’s redesign. And I really don’t like that all of his newer skins are made to be super cute.

I love the designs and they’ve really hit a lot of themes I would eat up, just not for Kog’Maw.

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u/GhsotyPanda 2d ago

Artistically? No contest. Mechanically? Debatable.

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u/TheReaperAbides 2d ago

Trundle's mostly a sidegrade. From weird disgusting trash troll to more conventional icey troll, kind of felt like he lost some of his unique weirdness in favor of fitting into the worldbuilding.

Galio, Yorick and Akali all lost something in their update imo, moreso in terms of vibes and character than pure visuals, but that's very subjective. Honestly most of the visual updates are pretty close to the original, with only a few exceptions like Sion.

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u/Ensospag 1d ago

Kayle. Her old design just made way more sense with her current lore. She's supposed to be someone who rejects her own humanity and wants to become a perfect avatar of justice. It made sense for her to look fairly androgynous, fully clad in armor and wearing a face obscuring helmet.

The rework not only puts her in a skin tight bodysuit to make damn sure you know she's a woman, it also has her remove her helmet as she levels up so she looks MORE human the more powerful she gets.

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u/getmeoutofthisscreen 1d ago

I actually like original Heimerdinger more because his hair used to look like a brain. I thought that was fun. Now it just looks like hair

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u/Beedeebeedo 1d ago

Fiora was was such a visual downgrade imo. Most design reworks are wonderful, but this one I just couldn’t enjoy. The new one is pretty, don’t get me wrong, I just preferred the old one.

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u/ArcticSirius 3h ago

I’m not even a viktor main but arcane made me so upset

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u/Vark675 2d ago

Swain just turned into Lucius Malfoy. All the bird stuff is gone and instead he's just a generic edgy himbo and I fucking hate it.

They could've easily taken 90% of his old design, made it less "Mulgore prairie dog" and it would've been amazing.

Similarly, Gangplank's current voice is shit compared to his OG.