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My curiosity was piqued, though, and I soon became a strange breed: a brusquely titled “League of Legends Content Consumer.” I didn’t play the game, but I ate up everything else that Riot was putting out. To have these rich stories, and to have them hidden in optional reading material? It seemed like such a shame. Initially, my thought was, “What a waste.” I’d heard friends talk about the characters of League and asked, “How do you know that? That’s not said in the game!” It was then that I was introduced to League lore, to the immense library of character profiles and backstories that are out there, part of the League of Legends IP, giving players who desire more insight a little something to chew on. Long before Arcane landed on Netflix, something had started to shift. The game mechanics were fun but they couldn’t hold me for long. I couldn’t stand the community, and as more of an RPG player in general, I wanted more story. I had played, but only because friends were into it. While I’m recommending that every fan watches Bridging the Rift, I feel like this write-up deserves some honesty: I was not always a Riot fan. “How do you texturize it to look like a painting?”

Listening to Yee talk about writing characters (“Voices in my head that argue a lot,” he says) really shows how much passion this animation was made with, and the look at how Fortiche Studios grew from a team of five to nearly three hundred thanks to Arcane is fascinating. Hopefully, though, it’ll only take until episode two for Riot to put us out of our misery this time.Īt just over twenty-six minutes long, Bridging the Rift part one is an easy watch, but one that - if, like me, you put it on in the background anticipating dry storyboarding details - you may find yourself pausing to stop and sink into.Īs a weekly dip back into the world of Arcane, Bridging the Rift has a lot to offer. With an amazing 100% Rotten Tomatoes score and a staggering 97% of Google reviews being positive, there’s no way to say that Arcane turned out to be anything other than a sweeping success.īut how did it get there? Agonizingly, we don’t know yet.Īnyone who has seen Arcane will know that the writers love their cliffhangers, but who would’ve expected that they’d do it to us in a docuseries too? It’s delightfully enraging and horrendously effective, so I can’t see them stopping that tactic any time soon.

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At its debut, it was Netflix’s highest-rated series so far, and within a week of its premiere, it ranked first on the Netflix Top 10 Chart in 52 countries. – Arcane Season 1, Episode 2 (as referenced in Bridging the Rift: Part 1)Īrcane did make it, that’s for sure. “When you’re going to change the world, don’t ask for permission.” Their immediate response to the concept was a clear no, with Beck even saying, “How am I going to talk Christian out of this?” Riot Games founders Beck and Merrill are honest, telling the camera that they simply didn’t think Arcane was a good idea. “I Only Dream in Risky” makes clear from the start that consumers weren’t the only ones. Riot Games/ForticheĪt the time, most consumers would’ve shaken their heads at a full-season animation based on a multiplayer online battle arena game (MOBA, a term not quite so prevalent outside of gaming circles then as it is now). Back when a three-year-long pandemic would’ve seemed almost laughable, Hamilton came busting out onto the stage, and The Force Awakens had brought Star Wars back to the forefront of cinema. Part one of Bridging the Rift, “I Only Dream in Risky” takes us back to 2015. A big step up from two Gs for some drawings. The final budget for the (now-Emmy-nominated) show, for those interested, was estimated to be anywhere from 90 to 100 million dollars.

From there, in an almost comedic series of microtransactions, Linke tenaciously nickel-and-dimed Riot Games into letting him make Arcane. That got him some concept art, and the begrudging agreement to shell out another five thousand, to see what they’d look like as 3D models. – Christian Linke, Bridging the Rift: Part 1 “If you can figure out what is a thing that if you love it, a lot of people would love it, that’s where you should go hard.” “I Only Dream in Risky” goes into detail about how Linke had to slowly persuade Riot Games that his vision, a deep story expression of these characters that they worked with every day, was even remotely viable. (Interviewing, wildly enough, with Yee, who would later be his co-executive producer for Arcane.) His road from there to showrunning Arcane wasn’t paved with gold - in fact, it wasn’t even paved with very much money.

As part one explains, Linke was a League of Legends beta player who responded to a “sketchy Craigslist ad” for a customer support agent for Riot Games. Christian “Praeco” Linke is now a creative director and composer working at Riot Games.