League of Legends’ Udyr rework has been quite the journey, as it seeks to transform one of the MOBA‘s most underwhelming champions into a true force to be reckoned with. Fleshing out his lore whilst simultaneously reworking his abilities and in-game visuals, Riot has poured hours into ensuring the Spirit Walker’s shaman identity is etched into the very fibres of his being – including his voice lines, of course.
Released all the way back in 2009, Jungle skirmisher Udyr remains one of League of Legends’ most beloved champions. Using his shaman-inspired kit to channel nature and transform in its image, he has a stable enough pick rate of 1.81%, but isn’t much to write home about.
At the moment, his abilities feel tired, his visuals are pretty unattractive in comparison to other champions, and there’s just not much of a draw to pick him over others. To remedy this, Riot set about reworking him, and has been doing so for some time.
With the first glimpses of said rework appearing on August 5 with Riot’s new gameplay trailer, LoL fans are excited to meet this new and improved Udyr on the Rift and take him out for a spin.
While his abilities are the main draw, Riot has also amended his lore, giving him special jungle voice lines in the style of Ivern that activate as he approaches different camps.
Discussing Udyr’s in-game personality at the rework’s dedicated press roundtable, narrative writer Dana Shaw revealed that the druidic-style jungler will address camps as he approaches them, just like Ivern.
“He’ll be interacting with Ashe and Sejuani, of course, and also with Lee Sin. He’s got Anivia, Ornn, and Volibear, as well as Bel’Veth and Lissandra.
“There would have been more, except we had to move a lot of the space we would have given to that to instead facilitate a new feature where he interacts with jungle camps,” she reveals.
“So, if he goes up to the Raptor camp he’s going to have specific voice lines for that. We wanted to really dig into the fact that he’s one with nature – he’s empathic, and he can feel the feelings and emotions of the things he is attacking.
“Even although it’s hard to highlight that aspect of his character through gameplay, we wanted to make sure that empathic quality came through in his voiceover.”
Udyr’s rework is live on the PBE, and will go live in-game as part of League of Legends patch 12.15 on August 9.