League of Legends AI cinematic: What was Riot Games thinking?

Riot Games has come under fire recently due to a cinematic that was released to celebrate the third anniversary of the launch of League of Legends: Wild Rift in China. Wild Rift is a mobile version of LoL, and it has earned a great deal of popularity (more so in Asia than in the Western market). 

The cinematic released for Wild Rift can only be described as AI-generated slop. This kind of content would be lazy no matter what company created it, but considering that this has come from a multi-billion dollar company like Riot Games boggles the mind. We’re going to be looking more closely at the Wild Rift cinematic to see exactly what it is and why it has caused such outrage in the LoL community. 

The cinematic is an AI-generated celebration of China’s third year of LoL: Wild Rift. The concept of the cinematic is actually quite interesting, which makes the execution all the more frustrating. The trailer envisions a new band formed of LoL champions, much like the girl group K/DA and the boy group HEARTSTEEL. This time around, the band is mixed gender. The members are Jinx, Seraphine, Aurora, Yasuo and Ezreal (who is already in HEARTSTEEL, but whatever). A new band seems like a logical choice for a LoL cinematic, seeing as K/DA and HEARTSTEEL have done so well. The skin possibilities and lore expansions for the theme could have been great. 

In the cinematic, the characters are preparing for a show when the stadium they are playing at is attacked by monsters. The champions fight them as the audience cheers, and they defeat the monsters and sing a song. That’s all in terms of the cinematic’s narrative. It’s basic, but it could have worked. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be, thanks to the confusing and downright awful choices made with the cinematic’s production.

The decision to create the trailer with AI is quite possibly one of the most confusing choices in gaming marketing history. Riot Games has the budget for high-quality animation, as we have seen tons of times before with their various cinematics and music videos for their fictional bands. 

Nothing can come close to the feeling you get when watching an animation that has been crafted by human hands, and the LoL animations are known for being some of the best out there. Why destroy that incredible track record with this dumpster fire of an animation (it doesn’t even feel worthy of being called animation to be honest)? The scenes in the cinematic are laughably bad. From the “You stupid monster” line delivery to the terrifying shots of the AI crowd, it’s all just painful to look at. There is also an AI-generated song in the cinematic called “Hurricane”, which makes absolutely no sense lyrically and is also just plain bad. 

Even the little things that are usually crucial in animation are completely ignored here. For instance, there is no consistency in the character’s designs, outfits, hair styles, hair colours, etc. They are constantly changing from shot to shot. There is also no thought put into the actual abilities of the champions in the games. Jinx is wielding a pistol, her rocket launcher becomes a flamethrower, and Seraphine is randomly kicking bad guys. It feels like this was made by someone who doesn’t even know who the heroes are or how they function. 

Not only is this straight up awful, but it is also potentially damaging for the LoL brand, the animators who have worked for the company in the past, and any future animation projects. Years of fantastic work that emphasised the importance of heartfelt, emotive animation could be entirely forgotten in an instant because of this cinematic. 

As is to be expected, the reaction from fans has been less than forgiving. The trailer was initially released on the Wild Rift Weibo account. The immediate negativity led to the trailer being taken down quickly, but this is the Internet, so of course, it’s here forever. YouTuber I’m Not Dave reposted the video, and the comments are damning. 

@Corf says “What a terrible day to have eyes”, while @maxrebo2466 states “A forest was burned down to make this.” Reddit has been no kinder to the cinematic, understandably so. Redditor Moonbeamlatte sums it up pretty well with their comment on a thread discussing the cinematic, “I was so willing to at least go into this with, like, idk constructive criticism but wow. This is just garbage. Like on a base level, utter trash. There’s so many discrepancies that I’m convinced that no one working on this watched the video all the way through.”

The backlash has been so severe that David Xu, executive producer for Wild Rift, took to X to release a statement regarding the cinematic. The statement reads as follows: 

This response was also not well received, with many believing that it felt forced, generic and generally unconcerned about the real issues. X user Matamer made the following comment on the post, “I don’t think “hit the mark” is the best choice of words tbh. It’s clearly ai and the fact that it was ok’d and posted shows there’s a lack of care somewhere.” This sums up the general feeling in the LoL community about the cinematic. This situation is more than just a simple, “sorry, we messed up, won’t happen again” scenario. 

To think that this content went through all the appropriate channels and was still approved shows a much deeper issue with quality control, but also with the company’s stance on animation. How could the same company that made the “Still Here” and “You Really Got Me” cinematics be capable of producing this kind of content? It’s night and day, and it’s a worrying sign of what’s going on behind the scenes. Wild Rift might not be the main LoL game, but it is still a significant part of the LoL brand, and it’s staggering to think that this rubbish could be in any way associated with the same company. 

The only thing we can hope for at this point is that this was a one-off. It was a severe misfire, but also a learning curve for Riot Games. Not only was the cinematic terrible in every way, but it was also an insult to the animators who poured their heart and soul into the other fantastic League of Legends cinematics. 

Riot Games is a multi-billion-dollar company. They have the money to pay their animators to create stunning, world-building animations, so the fact that they let this low-budget abomination happen is astonishing. Let’s hope this will be a lesson learned moment for the company. If it isn’t, the future of Riot Games’s once stellar animation reputation is looking more than a little grim.