The closed beta for theLeague of Legendstag team fighting game2XKO is just around the corner, and there has been a lot of discussion about its roster.
The beta begins on September 9, with the full launch slated for later this year, and the plan is for the game to remain online through the beta into the full release, aside from periodic maintenance.
At the moment, Riot has revealed the eight characters who will be playable in the closed beta: Ahri, Ekko, Jinx, Illaoi, Braum, Darius, Yasuo, and the most recent reveal,Vi from the Arcane series. Two more will be addedfor a total of ten at launch.
But who will those characters be? The developers have some insights into how they select characters for 2XKO.
How Do They Pick Characters?
Eurogamerheld interviews with 2XKO’s executive producer Tom Cannon and director Shaun Rivera at Evo Las Vegas, where the game had its final event demo before the start of the beta and eventual release.
For the launch roster, since they were building the foundation of the game alongside playable characters from scratch, the goal was to represent a wide variety of playstyles while also keeping things relatively straightforward from an artistic and technological standpoint.
However, now that they’ve built that foundation, Cannon says the team is “starting to get more adventurous” with the characters they pick.
One of the reasons we’re in the League of Legends IP is because we have so many wacky different characters! Mages, Robots, Yordles! I want that breadth in our roster eventually, so you’re gonna see a lot more of that eventually. – Tom Cannon
For now, though, they’ve been playing it relatively safe with the roster, aiming for the sweet spot of picking popular characters while also providing players with a healthy, diverse metagame, and it seems like popularity was a secondary consideration to that playstyle diversity.
According to Rivera, “it’s less about us wanting to pick popular champions, and more whether there’s a playstyle we want to get into the game because a lot of people like that playstyle. Then it’s like, cool, which champion fits that style best.”
So we wanted to get a high mobility champion in the game that can really take to the sky and mix you up in the air. Ahri definitely makes sense in that role right? She’s magical, high-mobility, and elegant in that way. Some are just a perfect fit to the puzzle piece. Also, a lot of people like her. – Shaun Rivera
So, for now, they’ve been focusing on offering a wide range of playstyles and archetypes with popular characters, and also keeping character development simple as they built the foundation of the game.
According to Cannon and Rivera, though, fans should start expecting to see wackier picks after the closed beta, and characters who aren’t “just a typical human doing human things.”
Once the game gets to its closed beta and beyond, hopefully they’ll be able to get those characters playable quickly, since ten characters in the full release is pretty slim, even more so the eight in the closed beta, especially for a 2v2 team-based game.
It’ll have significant competition as well, with fellowteam-based fighting games Invincible VSandMarvel Tokon: Fighting Souls coming next year, with the lattergetting a closed betaaround the same time as 2XKO, with only two fewer playable characters to choose from.
