Fighting Games Friday: Hold That Project L
Riot Games’ Project L has been a long time in coming. The game, in a way, began in a primitive form as Rising Thunder, a free-to-play fighting game developed by Radiant Entertainment heavily inspired by Street Fighter. The full game never released after Radiant was purchased and absorbed by Riot Games, and they’re currently in the middle of fulfilling fan wishes for them to make a League of Legends fighting game. The developers weren’t kidding when they said the project would go dark for a while after it was last shown in October 2019, though the pandemic assuredly messed with their plans. The game is still a while off, but it now looks like a functional game from the latest showing.
A small part of the new video’s purpose was to show off which LoL Champions will be featured in the game, and how they can be adapted. The roster thus far includes popular faces like Ahri, Ekko, Darius, Jinx, and Katarina, likely a small sampling of the characters the initial roster will have when the game’s launch version will release. The real purpose here was to show off how development was progressing. It says something that the developers throughout the video and blog post needed to clarify how this game game still has a while to go in development. It looks as playable as Street Fighter V did during its initial reveal at the end of 2014.
It was after watching the video that I realized how similar this project is to Arc System Works and Cygames’ Granblue Fantasy: Versus. Like that game, this is a fighting game adaptation of a popular free-to-play project that will feature several of the title’s popular characters, with their techniques adjusted for a fighting game format. Both games wear their Street Fighter inspirations on their sleeves; there’s still time for Project L to change as it remains in development, but I have a hard time seeing too many core gameplay adjustments happening when the production team is so satisfied at its current progression. LoL is popular in more territories, however, and this game is likely to be free-to-play itself. Those factors, combined with how Project L will have much better online play with the use of rollback netplay, should help this be a more successful game out the gate.
Tom Cannon, senior director and creative producer of Project L, mentioned in the corresponding blog post that the game will not be shipping in 2021 or 2022, meaning it still has plenty more development hurdles to overcome. To note: I mentioned how this game currently resembles SFV when it was first revealed in December 2014, which didn’t end up releasing in its feature-deprived state until more than a year afterward in February 2016. This project could take the same amount of time from here at least. Riot could get away with releasing Project L in the same state SFV was initially released in if it’s indeed a free-to-play game, instead of a game released at a $60 price with free-to-play microtransaction schemes that arrive afterward. The game should be shown again early in the second half of 2022, between April and May next year. They’ll likely have more Champions ready to show off then too.
Meanwhile, Capcom showed off the previously-announced Luke this week, the final character coming as part of Street Fighter V’s last big update. I feel the same way about him as I did when he was revealed: He’s not the prettiest character around, the result from an artist who tried too hard to make a cool-looking character. But I like his move set, which utilizes the character’s repertoire as an MMA fighter and includes a nice mixture of close-range and mid-to-long-range attacks. He can be played as a very aggressive character (great for impatient players like me) and as a zoner. He’ll come as part of the update on Monday, November 29th.
A bit more interesting here is what Luke will represent. As in, he’s a representative for the future of the Street Fighter brand. It’s still not clear precisely what the development team means by this. Luke could be one among many characters in the next game, in a title that I would love to be a new equivalent to Street Fighter III. (This is very much wishful thinking on my part.) But they’re more likely referring to his move set, because Luke’s V-Skills and V-Triggers will work differently compared to other characters, which help give Luke his variety. We’ll know for sure what Capcom means when they announce the game next year. It will be very funny if this next SF game and Project L release at close to the same time.
We also finally got another look at DNF Duel, the fighting game adaptation of Dungeon Fighter Online in a collaboration between Arc System Works, 8ing, and Neople, announced right at the start of this year before it went dark. The new trailer reaffirmed how similar it looks to Arc’s other games, and how considerably prettier it looks compared to other fighters. Another video showing off the Berserker was subsequently released, which could — could — mean that a release isn’t too far off with promotional efforts intensifying. Time will tell if this will actually be the case when the companies involved provide a release timeframe, but at least we’ll be seeing this title more often.
There was a surprising amount of fighting game news within the last week, which makes this a fitting post to end the Fighting Games Friday feature on for a short while. These entries, to be fair, haven’t been weekly for a while, but I wanted to give an advance notice this time around. We’ll see if there’s another week as busy with fighting game news in December, but I’m having trouble seeing it happen.
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Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
