Adaptations aren’t easy. Taking something people love in 1 average and giving them a fresh way to fall in love with its stories and characters is always a herculean undertaking, which is part of what makes it so amazing that Riot Games and the squad at Fortiche were able to take the vague sketches of communicative and character in League of Legends and turn it into Arcane, a beautifully animated show full of compelling, complicated characters and a wonderfully tragic story.
To celebrate the release of Arcane’s final season, Riot created tie-in content for all of its biggest games, including fun cosmetic content for Valorant and Arcane’s Ambessa making her way to League as a playable champion. But the improvement squad behind Teamfight Tactics, Riot’s car battler spinoff of League of Legends, decided to take their Arcane celebration even further by dedicating an full period to the show.
Teamfight Tactics, like many live-service games, has distinct seasons (called “sets” in TFT) of content that are refreshed all fewer months. In TFT’s case, that means a full refresh of the units in the game and the addition of fresh mechanics, all based around a single theme. Past examples of set themes include music, with in-game factions being made up of different genres, or all the different types of magic in Runeterra, where the League universe takes place. The game’s 13th set, which went live Wednesday, is called Into the Arcane, and is themed entirely around the second period of the Netflix show.
Teamfight Tactics technically did an Arcane tie-in for the first period of the show as well, but the game was reasonably fresh then and the crossover only active the inclusion of a fewer characters from the show. It was effective, but it was besides small, and the squad had grander ambitions of an all-out Arcane set to go along with the series finale.
“We fundamentally had this large brainstorm where it was like, What does it mean to have an Arcane set?” Into the Arcane lead maker Winston Baker says. “What do you bring over? What are the elements of the show that are truly large for the game? How do we gotta adapt the show so that it fits with the subject and tone?”
Unsurprisingly for a show as visually stunning as Arcane, the first step was uncovering a way to bring Arcane’s gorgeous art style, full of dark colors and sinister tones to match its melancholy story, into TFT, a game mostly known for its bright and inviting colors, in a way that stayed actual to both projects. That task fell to TFT gameplay art manager Tori Ero.
Arcane period 2. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2024Image: Fortiche, Riot Games/Netflix
“We truly effort to have quite a few variety in our [set] themes for players over the course of the year,” Ero says. “I would say this 1 is most likely our darkest set, and possibly art-wise, our least colorful.”
“I remember making the gag to Tori, ‘Yeah, just go make it Arcane, but it should be TFT, how hard can it be?’” Baker says, laughing. “And she laughed and she’s like, ‘Maybe harder than you think.’ […] Then a week later my jaw dropped. I saw [this] Vander side-by-side [image]. And I was like, Wait, but you did it. I said it as a joke, Take this grimdark show and turn it into something truly beautiful for TFT. And then a week later you guys came back and I was like, Oh yeah, that’s it. That’s our angle. You nailed it.”
Vander’s TFT modelImage: Riot Games
The key to nailing all this, according to Ero, was a close and careful collaboration with the show’s animation squad at Fortiche.
“We were truly fortunate to have so many beautiful concepts and existing work from the show that we did pull from,” Ero says. “For the characters, we started with [Fortiche’s] model turnarounds and painted over them for concepts. We pulled in their direct concepts, we pulled shots from the show to be our card art. […] all step of the way we were able to collaborate straight with them and say like, Hey, what do you think of this? Is this suiting your imagination for this character still? Are we on the right track? And I feel like it created quite a few excitement in both directions. They were excited to see how we were adopting the show, and we were truly excited to see what they were making for the show and adopt it into the game as well. So I feel like it was just a truly healthy relation that was quite a few fun for this.”
Fortiche’s characters are beautiful and full of intricate details in Arcane, but you seldom see them from the tallness or top-down angle essential in a TFT match. This presented a unique challenge for the TFT art team, and resulted in any creative adaptations to Fortiche’s designs — small changes in styling or item that aid communicate crucial elements of character on smaller models from farther away.
Image: Riot Games
“In Arcane you see quite a few close-up cinematic shots and stuff, but erstwhile we’re adapting a character into the champion space, we gotta think about things like silhouette,” Ero explains. Another crucial origin is whether or not the characters are apparent fits for their role, like making certain tanks truly felt like tanks. “For example, with Steb, making a large backpack so he looks a small bit more tanky. And besides with the angle and the distance that you’re seeing things from, TFT characters are much smaller. So possibly we think a small bit little about expressions and more about exaggerated animations and things like that,” Ero says.
One example of this kind of adaptation work the squad was peculiarly arrogant of was Renni. Arcane fans will admit her as the Zaunite with the massive chainsaw that nearly kills Jayce. She looks incredible in the show, but she presented a fewer different problems for the art squad on Into the Arcane.
Renni from ArcaneImage: Fortiche, Riot Games/Netflix
“[Renni] in the show has this truly iconic cape, and we tried for a long time to keep the full cape,” Ero says. “We thought that was so cool, but then how could she have this large cape but be holding this immense chainsaw at the same time?” So the squad went back to Fortiche for ideas and got back a fewer pieces of concept art that didn’t make it into the character’s final plan on the show. In that art was a small half-cape that yet went consecutive into TFT as her final design.
Renni’s TFT modelImage: Riot Games
Ero said this kind of back and distant was constant in the process of making certain that Into the Arcane’s art perfectly balanced the planet of TFT and the planet of Arcane. And her squad wasn’t alone: The gameplay squad drew akin amounts of inspiration straight from Fortiche’s archives.
Adding Arcane characters, peculiarly those that are first to the show and didn’t come over from League of Legends, is simply a perfect example of what TFT allows for as an adaptation. League of Legends champions should be full pilotable, they gotta have unique abilities and animation, they should be fun to play with and again, they gotta interact with the over 150 another champions in the game, and most importantly, they gotta manage all of that while besides being carefully balanced to have a power level that fits in the game without breaking it. TFT units don’t gotta play by the same rules. As long as they’re correctly balanced around their cost, all they request is an array of excellent animations and they’ll fit right into a set. It’s easy to watch the first fewer episodes of period 2 and instantly clock Sevika as a perfect candidate for a powerful late-game TFT unit — her slot device arm cooking up a full mess of random power-ups in fights is precisely the kind of semi-random, but always rewarding, component that TFT excels at. And the TFT team thought so, too.
According to Shawn Elizabeth Main, Into the Arcane’s lead gameplay designer, the squad saw Sevika in the show and immediately emailed Fortiche and asked for everything the studio had on the character. “We truly wanted her to feel compelling,” Main says. “They sent over a full folder of papers and our illustrators pored through them, and that’s how we landed on these truly cool animations that feel truly distinct.”
Sevika from Arcane period 2Image: Fortiche, Riot Games/Netflix
Of course, that only translates due to the fact that the improvement squad manages to nail the feeling of Sevika’s kickass episode 2 fight scene for her TFT unit. She’s a five-cost, the most costly kind of unit in the game and a definitive late-game character. And erstwhile you yet get her on your board, she feels great. Playing with a powerful Sevika, it’s hard not to feel like Jinx while she’s giddily watching her erstwhile nemesis fight Smeech in the grimy alleyways of the Lanes. Her slot device arm has a chance to rotation all kinds of powerful attacks that could throw her anywhere on the battlefield, and just like in the show, each 1 has a uniquely useful quirk that helps her in amazing ways. She can burn enemies with a flamethrower, leap into the enemy team’s backline to take on their strongest and most susceptible units, punch enemies into oblivion, or even hit a jackpot and give you any gold — precisely the kind of chance and quasi-luck that make TFT matches fun.
Sevika’s TFT artImage: Riot Games/Fortiche
But fitting Arcane into Teamfight Tactics is about more than just the units. The real feat is making them all feel cohesive in the larger set.
“I feel like the trick to it, especially at those early stages, was figuring out the needs of good TFT gameplay, combined with how we can be expressive of the themes and the factions [of Arcane],” Main says. “We have an incredible thematic thing moving through the show, we have quite a few characters, images of what they look like in combat and things, which is what TFT needs. But then how do we break that down into the needs of all champion?”
For Main, the answer was all about factions. Arcane’s planet is full of different factions vying for power and characters creating tiny alliances and groups. This made for a perfect fit for TFT, which assigns each unit an Origin that, erstwhile played with another units from that same Origin, gives players unique synergy bonuses for their squad of units.
The early days of designing the set were all about determining how to represent each faction as an Origin. Main gives the example of the Firelights, the band of hoverboarding rebels led by Ekko. She says the show gives them 2 good additions right away, with Ekko and Scar. So then the squad added Zeri, a League of Legends champion who isn’t in Arcane, but seems like a natural fit to this group with her zippy play kind and green-and-yellow colour scheme. The next trick was figuring out what kind of bonus the Firelights should get, which is how the squad settled on giving them each a hoverboard to ride around on during fights. Then the squad repeated that careful process across all 14 Origins in the set, making certain each 1 felt unique for TFT, while inactive fitting nicely in the universe of Arcane.
Image: Riot Games
Image Riot Games
While Origins are a critical part of Teamfight Tactics’ gameplay, they besides service another clever purpose, which helps make TFT such a perfect place for a large-scale Arcane crossover. League of Legends is simply a fantastic game, but it’s besides an highly complicated one. Its learning curve is incredibly steep, and even erstwhile you’ve mastered the game, you can inactive only play 1 character at a time. In another words, it’s not precisely the perfect place to start if individual loves Arcane and wants to dive deeper into Runeterra through video games. Into the Arcane, on the another hand, is fundamentally like a set of Arcane action figures tossed into TFT. Players can always make certain their favourite characters are on their board, and Origins are an easy way for the game to reward that kind of fandom with increased power.
Take for instance the household Origin, which gives Powder, Violet, and Vander a peculiar bonus if you play all 3 of them. In certain instances, however, you can gain a household emblem that allows any another unit in the set to join the clan. Of course, the example everyone on the squad immediately gave: What happens erstwhile you make Silco a part of Powder, Violet, and Vander’s small family?
These silly and fun small self-created narratives are all over Into the Arcane, and the set is full of tiny ways to reward almost any combination of Arcane characters you can think of. That was a very crucial goal of the plan squad from the very beginning. While Teamfight Tactics, as the squad is happy to tell you, is already 1 of the most popular games in the world, the squad inactive expects that Into the Arcane, timed with the release of Arcane’s final period on Netflix, will bring a full fresh audience to the game. Providing that audience with fun and creative ways to proceed spending time with the characters they love was critical for the plan of this set.
Powder and Jinx’s modelsImage: Riot Games
“This was a peculiarly peculiar minute for us,” said Baker. “We know there are an tremendous number of fans of the show, so how can we make something appealing for them that would let them to proceed to experience these characters, these stories? 1 of the things that Tori and the folks who worked on our thematic improvement condition came up with was this thought of leaning into this thought of fanfiction, ‘What if?’ stories. What if Jinx and Vi were on the same team? Or what if we had the household in there so you could actually play Powder and Violet and Vander?”
“We’re truly excited to get a chance for you to tell your own stories,” Whalen said. “TFT has always talked about this fanfic approach to IP. How can we let you tell your own Arcane stories with these characters that you love? And so being able to celebrate that and seeing that actually come to life is truly amazing.”
Of course, an influx of fresh players besides meant that Into the Arcane needed to be approachable, in a way that isn’t always front of head for a fresh TFT set — all without sacrificing the complexity and depth that makes Teamfight Tactics large in the first place.
“We’ve talked about it for a while that TFT is kind of at its complexity ceiling,” TFT gameplay manager Stephen “Mort” Mortimer says. “We knew that with Arcane, there were going to be quite a few players coming back that haven’t played in a fewer sets, or even any fresh players. So we took a truly intentional [look at], Is this actually essential for the game or is this just complicated?”
Image: Riot Games
Mortimer pointed to the start of games in this set as the “best example” of this approach. In the past fewer sets, players in each lobby voted on 1 of 3 portals that altered each match. In Into the Arcane, a random modifier is chosen from a much smaller pool of options. Mortimer calls it a “great time to simplify it and just keep the ones players love.”
“Even any of our Trait designs are a small [more] approachable,” Mortimer continued. “The four- and five-costs start to ramp that up a bit, but by then you’re 20, 30 minutes into your first game and starting to truly enjoy it and get it.”
For Whalen, this was besides the perfect time to improve TFT’s new-player experience in general, and make onboarding a small easier. Among the various onboarding improvements with this set, Whalen specifically mentions the revamped version of a mode called Tockers Trials released with Into the Arcane. This version of the mode is specifically designed to aid fresh players learn the game through clever TFT-based puzzles, without the force of a full lobby and a real game.
It fits with the team’s broader ethos of making Into the Arcane the perfect place for people to go the minute they finish the Arcane finale.
“One of the ways that we think about this is if I watched Arcane, and I only know Arcane, what would make TFT a place where I want to play to know more about these characters?” Baker said. “So that’s kind of our hope, is that fans of the show come distant from the show just so hungry for more communicative and that they look at TFT and they’re not afraid of the mechanical component that League has. They look at it and they’re like, Oh, I think I can make this. It’s fundamentally a match-three game where you build an army or a squad and it has a more relaxed pace, and so hopefully they’ll effort it and then they fall in love.”
