LoL Wild Rift: Thresh Unbound
Riot Games

Due to content restrictions in China it is really hard to put an evil glowing skeleton into your game. So, how can you prove to 40 million players that the character they know and love is still the same even though he had to go through a massive glow-up? By doubling down on the fact that at the end of the day, he is WAY more fucking evil than they ever could have imagined.

After the excitement that was Ruination 2021 summer event, Wild Rift was tasked with building an epilogue of sorts. This featured one of the most iconic characters in all of League of Legends, Thresh, introducing his new human form.

This spawned out of a requirement given to us by our product and brand teams. Our task was to build a compelling campaign that would address this change head-on and build positive player sentiment. This was very much not an easy task so I partnered with the League IP and storytelling team to create a short film that showed Thresh is still incredibly evil and helped make a compelling case for moving his lore along. We pulled inspiration heavily from classic Hammer horror films staring Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing to build a villain that is undeniably fun to watch.

Player sentiment was overwhelmingly positive after the launch of the CG. It was so positive that the creative team was then tasked with re-designing Thresh’s in-game character model and splash art work to match the CG, something unheard of within the walls of Riot.

CD: Greg Killion
Dir: Dustin Wicke
Pro: Brian Reiss
Animation: Little Zoo
House: Axis Animation