The League of Legends World Championships are currently taking place in China and will continue to do so into November as we edge towards the finals. That means that Riot has to maintain quite a high-level of hype over what is an extended tournament structure. To help do that, it's created a new montage video that shows some of the lore of the game, how some of its major characters came to be the famed fighters they are today and all done in a beautifully made animation.
Instead of focusing on the players in this piece, Riot opted for a look at characters like Ashe, like Lee Sin - we see them training, fighting enemies, failing, facing off insurmountable odds and ultimately winning the day. As the video's pumping backing track claims, "Legends Never Die."
Released alongside the quarterfinals, they'll take place over the next few days. It begins with Longzhu Gaming vs Samsung Gaming today, October 19, followed by SK Telecom T1 vs Misfits Gaming tomorrow. Royal Never Give Up vs Fnatic takes place on October 21 and Team WE vs Cloud9 will happen on October 22.
This isn't the first time that Riot has leveraged animation to hype its premier tournament. In 2014 it created animated variants of the world's best players and showed them battling it out to a pumping soundtrack.
Our favorite though? 2013's anime-inspired creation:
