What does it take to build a League of Legends champion?

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Gnar

Gnar 1

From a game design standpoint, what I really enjoy is the transformation mechanic: I think that turned out really well and I’m happy that he has this uncontrollable transformation that feels really different, whether you're playing as him or against him. The LCS casters have coined the term “Gnar bar”—when a Gnar’s in the game you gotta watch the Gnar bar because it determines how fights flow. For a while it was a bit questionable: is little Gnar gonna feel good? Is big Gnar gonna feel good?

PCG: On that note, what were the biggest challenges designing Gnar?

AB: The biggest challenge from a game design standpoint was probably getting that transformation as good as possible, because it’s the whole hook of the character. Not doing it well means the character falls flat, and I think we did that pretty well.

Another challenge, honestly, has just been balancing him a bit. Originally when we were making him we thought, well, “Gnar won’t get picked up by pros because he’s not reliable”. Pros love reliability. But it’s turned out the opposite: if you’re really good at communication you make Gnar reliable, because now you can make your whole team work around the Gnar bar. On the other hand, if you’re in solo queue and you don’t know what you're doing, and your team isn’t on voicechat, it’s a lot harder to get people to coordinate around that. So it’s been hard to balance that, because he has such high payoffs when you actually coordinate with his intended mechanic.

Gnar Concept Art

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Shaun Prescott
Shaun Prescott
Australian Editor

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.