How Arcane made Riot rework Viktor in League of Legends

In July, the leaker Big Bad Bear revealed that Riot Games was planning to rework an Arcane character in League of Legends and the chosen one will be Viktor. He will receive a Visual and Gameplay Update (VGU) making his design more accurate with the transformations he went through in Arcane's first season. The goal is to modernize Viktor, a champion that was launched in 2011. Arcane's success could have accelerated this rework.

Viktor is a 25-year-old scientist (he will be older in season two) from Zaun, the undercity of the Arcane series. He grew up with a disability, a limp in his leg that made him use a cane from a very young age.

He had a very hard childhood living in poverty. As a kid, no one wanted to play with him because of his leg. Being alone most of the time, Viktor fell in love with science and machines. One day, he came across Singed, one of the most prominent scientists in Zaun working for the crime lord Silco.

Viktor asked Singed if he could help him with his experiments, but soon he realized his methods were not good. Years later, he was found out by Heimerdinger and moved to Pilltover to work with science. He wanted to create technology to help those in the Undercity have a better life.

When Jayce was arrested, Viktor was very intrigued by his work and soon they became friends. They worked on hextech innovations together, until Viktor found out he was terminally ill.

He started to push the limits of the hextech research to find a way to save himself, going to radical methods such as the use of a variant of Shimmer. In League of Legends, he's very different from Arcane's lore.

In the League of Legends splash art, Viktor is fully covered in armor and has a third mechanical arm that fires a laser. In his lore, he has the same goal as Arcane's Viktor: finding a way to give Zaun's people a better life.

However, he thinks that only by embracing technology, humanity can reach its full potential. He removed all of his body parts that somehow were connected to feelings - the bigger human flaw - and became a full mechanical being.

Riot Games chose to change his lore and appearance for the first season, making a Viktor "before everything bad happens" style.

However, this mechanical Viktor transformation can be something to happen in the next season. Some fans theorize that, after Arcane's season one events, Viktor will drastically change, becoming closer to his League of Legends champion.

This year, Riot announced that a champion and also Arcane's character will be receiving a VGU, which means a visual rework. Fans started to theorize that Viktor might be that mystery character for some reasons:

One of the main reasons was the fact that Viktor had not received a skin in two years. His last skin was the High Noon Viktor, launched on May 26. This might be a reason why Riot has not launched a skin for Viktor, because he was having a rework soon.

The other reason, that also goes in the meeting of the first one, we haven't seen Viktor's transformation to that mechanic being in Arcane yet. Launching the VGU before Arcane Season Two would be spoiling some events that might be happening. Also, Arcane is now a canon event in League of Legends, which means that Viktor "has to" follow his evolution in League as well.

The last trailers from Arcane Season Two could be indicative that Viktor's rework will happen eventually. As we see in the trailer, Viktor releases some purple lights from his arm due to the hextech magic, just like the ones we saw from Arcane season one. This is showing us how the hextech is changing Viktor's body, and how this energy is becoming part of him. Viktor is becoming a true hextech mage.

All of these points are making people believe that Viktor will be the chosen character for a rework since Riot has now to update his looks according to Arcane developments. This means Viktor will probably have more void-inspired elements rather than his traditional mechanical appearance. 

Of course, if he gets reworked, the same will happen to his skin kit which is not huge - Viktor has only four skins - and his skins will probably show more of his human side. The art concept has not been released yet. If you want to imagine what kind of details can this rework have, see this cool fan concept of Viktor's "human" form.

That's all for now. Stick around for more news and updates on esports.gg.