Udyr set for rework after League community vote, new skin lines confirmed

At the beginning of January, Riot Games released all the information regarding their plans for 2021, with major changes highlighted for its flagship game, League of Legends, above all, a vote was announced for all players, to be made through the game client.

In this, it was possible to choose between five champions of which the winner would have a new visual and gameplay update (VGU), the nominees being; Skarner, Nocturne, Quinn, Shyvana and Udyr.

Today, after almost a month of voting, Riot has released the results, and with a huge percentage of the vote, Udyr has been chosen by the community as the champion to receive a VGU.

(Picture: Riot Games)

Justin Albers, a Concept Artist at Riot, commented: “Udyr is one our oldest champions and it's time he received his upgrade. He’s got tons of potential to be one of the coolest characters in the game, and I'm looking forward to exploring and figuring out what the best version of our bearded melee spirit shaman can be.”

Also, Mary Gumport, Narrative Lead, added that "the Narrative team on League has been thinking about him and his place in Runeterra for a while now, so I’m excited to finally give him the full attention he deserves."

• Read more: League of Legends Season 11: Viego, new skins, rank and progression revamp, and more

It’s expected that like the other VGUs, Riot will share the progress of Udyr's transformation on its developer blog, with a possible launch of its VGU in early 2022.

Results of the vote for the next themed skins

(Picture: Riot Games)

Riot also published the results of a vote to choose what the next themes for League skins will be, with the three options being Crime City Nightmare, Monster Tamers, and Debonair 2.0.

Similar to Udyr's case, the Crime City Nightmare theme managed to sweep the vote, taking a landslide victory in all competitive regions except China, where Debonair 2.0 won by a very close margin.

(Picture: Riot Games)

With this, Riot announced that although Crime City Nightmare will be released in the next few months, thanks to the good reception of the Chinese community, Debonair 2.0 will also have a release soon, while the Monster Tamers theme will also be developed later.

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Karl Abad, who works as Thematic Development Producer, explained that “there’s a lot of exciting potential here to show a compelling horror-focused power fantasy that we haven’t explored yet."

"I can’t wait to see how our artists bring this eerie, sinister thematic to life. Hope we don’t go a little mad in the process..."