The existence of a new Riot Forge game called Mageseeker has been leaked by the South Korean games rating board, the game will focus on the League of Legends character Sylas.
Riot Forge has been Riot Games’, the developer of massive MOBA League of Legends, effort to expand its universe of Runeterra to genres and games outside its regular purview by acting as a publisher for other developers’ games set in Riot’s world. The existence of a new Riot Forge game dubbed Mageseeker has been accidentally confirmed by a South Korean video game age-rating body.
New Riot Forge game will be about Sylas
The description of a new Riot Forge game was accidentally published by a South Korean ratings board earlier in the week. This game has yet to be officially announced by Riot, but the presence of a national rating board’s evaluation of the game’s intended content means that it’s very likely to be entirely real. The name and description both point to Sylas, the Unshackled, as the game’s protagonist and playable character. As with many Riot Forge games, Mageseeker seems to be aiming to let players experience Runeterra and its stories in a much more traditional fashion.
Sylas is a Demacian man with the magical ability to sense other mages and their powers and manipulate that magical energy. In Demacia, mages are feared and reviled, as the nation was founded in the wake of cataclysmic wars fought by mages, and settled in an area filled with a magic-resistant stone called Petricite that seems to absorb and defuse magic. Wicked investigators and inquisitors called Mageseekers seek out and imprison or kill those born with magical abilities, treating them as threats to the state and its way of life. When he is young, Sylas is used by these Mageseekers as a glorified bloodhound against other mages, before he tires of their abuse and betrays them, becoming imprisoned.
When in prison, Sylas is kept in solitary confinement, locked in enormous shackles and chains made of Petricite. After another League of Legends champion, Lux, takes pity on him and smuggles him a book about Petricite, Sylas discovers that Petricite doesn’t suppress magic, it stores it. Sylas uses this magic, and his ability to draw in other magic and manipulate to break him out, using his Petricite chains as enormous powerful batteries for his powers.
In the current canon of League of Legends, Sylas has broken out of prison and is leading a revolution of mages wronged by Demacia’s borderline-genocidal practices against the kingdom. Sylas is depicted as having noble intentions, but a vengeful and jaded outlook from his time in the Demacian prison. Mageseeker would likely put fans in Sylas’ shoes, focusing on his story and journey from a magical tool for the Demacian state to a leader set both on freeing Demacia’s mages as well as exacting revenge.
Mageseeker seems likely to be an action-focused game in which players take on Sylas’ impressive magical powers and his signature ability to absorb other magic and wield it against its original user. Other genres are possible, but Sylas’ dynamic abilities and story seem best fit for a single-player brawler reminiscent of the Arkham series of Batman games, with a focus on combo-heavy combat and exploration.
