Riot Released Official 2XKO Cinematic, Shows Off Unannounced Character

Whether you like their games or not, Riot justifiably has a bit of a reputation for putting out some really high quality cinematics for their projects. Starting out with epic, Blizzard style cutscenes in the early days of League of Legends, and eventually shifting the direction to stylish music videos that encorporate a wide variety of visual and musical styles.

Today, to mark the upcoming public release of 2XKO, the game gets a whole official cinematic of its own, with visuals following the game's art style, and Riot's in-house composers whipping out a sort of electropop song featuring vocals from Courtney LaPlante of Spiritbox.

As expected, the theme of the cinematic revolves around two characters, Ekko and Ahri, joining forces to become more than the sum of their parts and face battles that they wouldn't be able to handle on their own. After all, it's a music video, so it's less about storytelling, and more about delivering on the choreography and sentimental moments that are enhanced through the music, lyrics, and even editing. As usual, Riot handled that part quite well.

What's interesting is that outside of just being a cool little video, this serves as a quiet announcement for Warwick. If you've been following the leaks, it's not going to be much of a surprise for you, but it's still a pretty good addition to the roster.

Also worth noting that while the leaked lines acknowledge him as Vander, his appearance is still based on his League of Legends appearance, rather than the slightly more human form seen in Arcane.

2XKO itself will be coming out of closed beta and entering full release tomorrow on October 7th. Until then, the game will remain offline.