Look at this fucking splash art.
League of Legends developer Riot Games just added three new champion skins to the hit multiplayer game’s public beta, and staying true to the League brand, they all look very cool. Also very...Blizzard-y?
Take Brand, for instance. His base appearance is a dude engulfed in flames with abs so hot they’re literally on fire:
Sort of like a MOBA version of Ignus from Planescape: Torment. (You get a cookie if you understand that reference).
The new “Spirit Fire Brand,” meanwhile, turns him into a voodoo-practicing shaman. From the influential League of Legends news site Surrender at 20:
He looks an awful lot like Nazeebo, the Witch Doctor character from Diablo III and, more recently, Blizzard’s League-esque game Heroes of the Storm:
I mean, they both even summon up wraith spirit things to attack enemies. Here’s Brand:
...and here’s Nazeebo:
Then there’s “Cosmic Reaver Kassadin,” who looks like an advanced unit one might be able to build in the upcoming StarCraft II Protoss campaign, Legacy of the Void:
Look at all those energy fields and wormholes!
Last but certainly not least is “Demon Vi,” which turns the lady with mechanized iron fists of punching into something not unlike a Succubus:
She also has a bunch of neat flying animations with those little pink demon wings of hers:
Succubi aren’t unique to Blizzard, of course. But the original Diablo did introduce one of the most memorable enemy succubus characters in gaming—one that’s recently been adapted into a skin for one of Heroes of the Storm’s most badass lady fighters:
(None of these similarities are a bad thing, mind you. Riot has a rich (and extremely lucrative) history of borrowing motifs from other areas of gaming and pop culture and weaving them into the ornate tapestry of League of Legends. And it’s not like Blizzard hasn’t taken a thing or two of their own either.)
The three new skins will all cost 1350 Riot Points (RP), which is a little less than $10 a pop. No release date, but skins on the PBE usually end up making into the main game pretty quickly.
All the League of Legends screens and splash art come via Surrender at 20.