There’s a clear distinction between a “good story” and a “good video game story.”
A generally good story delivers a scenario to its audience and meaningfully develops it, drawing some emotional or thematic purpose out of its various elements along the way.
A good video game story, though, has an entirely separate task: to facilitate gameplay. It’s forced to justify why a group of enemies has suddenly spawned or to explain the lore behind some new in-game ability. The best games can blend the two seamlessly, creating an experience that stands as singular and undefined by the constraints of either story or function.
When that combination is done poorly, though? That’s when you get “Arcane” — whose monotony can’t be avoided by any amount of button-mashing.
The series, based on the uber-popular strategy game “League of Legends” published by Riot Games, premiered the first chunk of its second season Saturday on Netflix. Riot announced in June that this season would be the show’s last, but not without confirming that further film and television projects in the “LoL” universe were already in the works.
What’s good for brand synergy, though, isn’t so hot for storytelling.
“Arcane” season 2 picks up right where the former left off, as the conflict between estranged sisters Vi (Hailee Steinfeld) and Jinx (Ella Purnell) reaches its head in an attack that rocks the foundations of both the utopian city of Piltover and its impoverished underbelly, Zaun.
Also acting within the story are members of Piltover’s government, like councilwoman Mel (Toks Olagundoye), and rising police star Caitlyn (Katie Leung); scientists researching the magical Arcane, Jayce (Kevin Alejandro), and Viktor (Harry Lloyd); as well as insurgents in Zaun seeking a better life, like Ekko (Reed Shannon), and Sevika (Amirah Vann).
If that sounds needlessly complicated, it’s because it is. “Arcane”’s glut of characters and plotlines is apparent from the very beginning of its new season, and by the time you reach the end of the three released episodes, it becomes obnoxious.
The show is obsessed with the proliferation of lore for lore’s sake. The first season was similarly long-winded and disparate, but its out-the-gate momentum kept the experience feeling somewhat unified. Now, with its wobbly, apathetically-constructed legs beneath it, its collection of plot threads, characters and references launches into a full sprint — even as its central character drama limps lamely back where it was three years ago.
In “Arcane,” characters feel emotions solely for the sake of having felt them. The show isn’t interested in probing intense emotional questions or in the thrills of an intense action scene, and even its slick animation and purposeful framing provide little more than base-level visual communication.
Rather, the point of “Arcane” is to elicit that rush you get as multiple plotlines converge and all of your knowledge — all of the lore, foreshadowing and emotion that the story has so sterilely communicated to you — leaves you hanging on, causing you to question what will happen next but never why you should actually care.
This is all “Arcane” is worth in the end: a void collection of common tropes and manufactured drama; a blasé critique of injustice in which both sides are right and no problem can truly be too great so long as everyone gets to look badass and things end with an appropriately punchy cliffhanger.
Even within this framework, the show has its moments that make for appropriately entertaining television, and the third episode’s strong ending leaves some hope for improvement in the final six. In an industry already bracing for an unbearable slew of video-game adaptations and tie-ins (“Minecraft” movie, anyone?) viewers, much less “LoL” fans, could do far worse.
Still: even if “Arcane”’s meandering, hollow story existed within the context of a fun and exciting video game, I doubt it’d leave me reaching for any button besides “off.”
Parts 2 and 3 of “Arcane” release on Nov. 16 and Nov. 23.
Kevin Lynch can be reached at lync1832@stthomas.edu.