User blog comment:SirAston/Gnar's Lore OR How Riot decided to un-lore/@comment-5035765-20140801194116/@comment-5955640-20140802040430

I don't really understand how this can be a complaint that can come from anyone who was around from Season two and less. Some champs had some really atricious lores. Sort of simple back story flavor text that was aided by the Judgements and the Journal of Justice.

Even with those things you could get away with never knowing who you were playing as seeing as the characters barely had any real character dialog and didn't communicate with each other in game in any way and any and all special events and easter eggs were few and far between if not existing outright.

Graves is on Summoner's Rift to get revenge on Twisted Fate but after the teaser release of said champ who would know except anyone who bothered to read the lore? You might be able to infer now that Twisted Fate has gotten updated and now reacts to Graves suggesting a relationship in game with the player finding out about it organically.

Still even then Graves has bonus lines as well but not with Twisted Fate and just Nocturne? Oh because the Smokescreen is blinding like Nocturne's ult? Well that's just another pun which was/is a big problem with the characterization because puns, forth wall jokes, and generic references to in game mechanics was sort of the bare minimum even with the Journals and Justice readings you don't get to know how these characters are unless you do some digging which while looking up the lore is fine the Journal is completely uninviting and there wasn't an immediate place to read the Judgements of various characters.

So even when expanded writing did infer a true, multifaceted character (and it wasn't uncommon that it didn't) it didn't play out in game really. The character was just a pile of data that helped you win a match and was detatched to all the other characters in game as you were to the character you were playing.

So as you might have guessed by now. I don't consider the lore building flavor text to mean much of anything because only big fans will know it and only fans of the character itself will read it. If you like the character as a tool to win matches with you could very easily not care less. But if you play the character. In game and unique things happen, you sort of can't get away without learning of the character's nature.

So I'm not bothered by Gnar's lore because another thing about it is that it can just be like a lot of champion's lore in the last couple of years it only get added onto to the lore (as much of the lore is not ret-conned, just moved to a different place and is still canon making it no different from the Journal of Justice which was never in the lore text boxes either but had tons of relevant canon character material as well) of characters that Gnar interacts with or gains stories with as time goes by.

Caitlyn came out and she was a standalone character searching for some guy (that isn't in the game offcially speaking) and we find out she has a co-worker and that Co-worker has a relationship with him and that one guy with the Hammer and the two of them also chase this Chick around who causes trouble.

The in game character network and additional lines for various things and moments sort of do more to paint a character and the lore just adds to that.

But I want to mention is that if you are bothered by Gnar's lore not having details than you have to also turn in that card that allows a character to have mystique and interest purely through what you don't know about them or give up complaining about standalone characters who were changed so they can have a more invovled lore. Because technically at this paticular moment that's what Gnar is. Another classical standalone character with barely any lore to really go into detail on his character other than the most basic things one might infer from just playing him with very few lines indicating origin or relationship.