League of Legends' Bel'Veth
Much of the world's recent interest in Riot Games has been centered around its expansion into TV and film or its efforts to expand its portfolio of games. But while it's playing in new genres and making friends in Hollywood, the dedicated design team behind League of Legends is still adding champions to the roster, and tweaking old ones at the same time.
With the recent release of Bel'Veth in June, Riot is now supporting a multiplayer game with 160 playable characters. Though only a maximum of 10 can be in Summoner's Rift at any given time, each new addition to the roster has incredible rippling effects on the state of the game.
Bel'Veth's addition to League of Legends allowed the development team to flex its muscles and explore new technical and creative fields. Some of the team that helped bring her to life took time to explain the highs and lows of that process, and show how developers can still conceive new design space even after a decade of live game development.
Bel'Veth is the self-proclaimed empress of the Void, a nether-realm in the League of Legends universe that is home to a number of dark, destructive creatures. Like other Void-themed characters, she's monstrous in nature, taking on a humanoid form in the narrative cinematics, but assuming the form of a floating supernatural manta ray in gameplay.
"We looked at our roster and realized that we didn't have any monstrous humanoid female [champions]," said Ryan Mireles, lead producer on gameplay for League of Legends. He compared her to other champions like Renekton (alligator humanoid), Nasus (jackel-headed humanoid), and Rengar (big cat humanoid), reflecting a more modern approach that differs from reported sentiments earlier in the company's history.
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