The start of the 13th League of Legends season has been anything but smooth.
Leading up to the esports kickoff event, many fans began voicing their displeasure with Riot Games’ lack of communication regarding their games esports scene and League itself. Just about a week ago, Riot finally announced their season kick-off event plans, with the esports scene receiving special streams with fun matchups on Summoners Rift.
Riot also outlined the timeline for the first patch of Season 13 and the release date for everyone’s favorite part of the new year, the League cinematic. Safe to say once the video finally dropped, fans were left quite disappointed.
The two-minute video titled “Brink of Infinity” was a far cry from the amazing champion-based spectacle League fans have grown so fond of over the years. In fact, it didn’t feature a single champion at all. Instead, it just had a butterfly traversing a battle-stricken Summoner’s Rift with a voiceover and homage to some of League’s most iconic esports moments.
The general consensus is this video did not meet the mark for fans, and even Riot themselves came out on social media to provide some much needed transparency to the fans. In a way, the disappointing cinematic might have been a good thing, acting as a catalyst spurring the creators of League to finally break their silence towards the community.
The real gem to come from the fallout of Season 13’s cinematic comes from a familiar territory, Reddit.
In light of the cinematic, one League fan, Omnimouse, posted what can only be described as a “budget” version of the video.
The 37-second clip is a hilarious rendition of the cinematic illustrated through MS paint, complete with a purposefully misspelled Riot Games title card and the best MS paint butterfly known to mankind. Don’t forget the very random appearance of Lumpy Space Princess from Adventure Time to signify the “Brink of Infinity.” The best part by far is the creator cutting the butterfly out to then swing it around their screen to signify it flying through the air.
The video perfectly tracks the cinematic, complete with audio portions of the real video playing in the background. It is such a silly, yet beautiful way to sum up the cinematic in the least costly way possible.
Check out the hilarious budget 2023 League cinematic here:
The now-viral video has over fourteen thousand upvotes after only being on the League subreddit for a day. The funniest part of the bootleg cinematic is the fact it still manages to encapsulate the true video in such little time with a much “lower” budget.
While there is certainly still some tension surrounding the start of Season 13 between the fans and Riot, this video from Omnimouse gives everyone a chance to just laugh.