Reaction: Arcana Skins

 

Images from Surrender @ 20 and Skin Spotlights!

You know what's funny to me? How this PBE patch has four skins in it, and that's considered a "light" patch by today's standards. I started playing around an age where 3 or 4 skins per patch was the norm, and any more than 5 was hitting the gold mine. We're spoiled these days! Though sure, to be fair, LoL's roster has gotten significantly larger since 2013, so it makes sense to also up the skin output.

This new skin line is themed around Tarot cards! And I will say these splash arts are unironically some of the coolest in the game. I do love the borders and symbols to really make them look like cards.

I'm really not too sure about Arcana Xerath himself though. He SEEMS to be based on The Magician with a similar pose, but the eye symbol over his recall makes me second guess that. I have a surface knowledge about tarot cards, admittedly.

But even design-wise I'm a little uneasy. Riot's been laying it on hard with e-boy looking characters, especially between Aphelios, Sett, and Veigo lately. And even last year, they took the notably monstrous Thresh and turned him into a conventionally attractive anime man in the Spirit Blossom skin line. And now they've done the same with Xerath, a character who in canon is an animated coffin but this skin makes him a really pretty man and I'm just. Bored of it. You don't have to default to this when human-ifying non-human characters.

Thankfully the other skins are better, and even then, my problems with Xerath is mostly just a personal issue. Lucian here is seemingly based on The Justice, with the scale popping up on this splash art and his recall animation. I will say this skin line definitely seems like one you'd buy for the fancy spell effects, cause they are most definitely some stylish effects.

Lucian himself looks cool I suppose, though I am a sucker for the color scheme of red, gold, and black. Just in terms of raw design, it feels generic enough that it'd fit into just about anything. Some of the texture work on the model itself looks neat though.

Camille is another strange one. You'd get the impression that she's meant to be The Empress from looking at this splash art, but during her recall animation...

...She very clearly takes up a pose similar to The Hanged Man. That's strange, and I'm not sure I entirely see the correlation, other than she hangs on walls. But either way, she looks nice and stylish like you'd expect from any Camille skin. Now that I get a good look at her, maybe the point IS the fancy texture work with these skins, at least for the clothes. I do find it funny that her grapple-hips are covered up with entire masks attached to her thighs.

For me, the REAL star of the show is Tahm Kench, clearly representing The Emperor with the flaming crown atop his head. And MAN he sells the demon-emperor look SO much. I do think there's at least a bit of thematic overlap with another skin of his being royalty-themed, but this still stands on its own, I think. And I especially love this distinct lack of eyes or even any other facial features other than his mouth. And again, this splash art is ESPECIALLY so well made. Very desktop-worthy.