League Of Legends kicking off the new season with a Warriors cover
Here we are, don't turn away now
As League Of Legends winds up to start its tenth season on Friday, Riot Games have dropped a new anthem for the MOBA - or an old one, really. The new season's cinematic music video is a cover of Warriors, see, the iconic (and never-bested) 2014 World Championship theme by Imagine Dragons. Now the song is all grim, choral, and bwampy, like so many other modern moody pop covers, which seems a bit of a shame. As for the new season, preparations are all set, with a new character and a whole heap of changes having arrived yesterday. Here we are, don't turn away now.
If this take on Warriors sounds familiar (beyond how everyone's doing this sort of thing), that might be because it's by 2Wei and Edda Hayes, who also did that grim Destiny's Child cover in a Tomb Raider movie trailer.
Check out the LoL 10.1 patch notes and Teamfight Tactics 10.1 patch notes for the changes coming with Season 2020.
LoL isn't my MOBA of choice and boy howdy its makers are all sorts of awful but I do still like that they set aside a chunk of the marketing budget to just make songs and music videos. Every year their music department collaborates with performers to create full and fancy original songs. Of all the ways companies spend small fortunes to push their products, that is my favourite. Even if it does look terrible when they put computer-generated characters on stage live alongside the real (and real good!) singers:
I can get why some prefer that Pop/Stars to Warriors, and I especially like the sheer weirdness of pretending it's a girl group formed by LoL characters, but Warriors has the overblown fight song vibe I crave in this context. Pop/Stars is too good of a pop song for a MOBA anthem.
Riot have so much LoL on the go. Along with making a card game, an esports team manager, a fighting game, and an action-RPG-sorta-thing, they've called on other studios for a turn-based RPG and a platformer.
Pip, our former Warriors correspondent, would never forgive me if I didn't include this:
