Riot went a bit "out there" with some of League of Legends' recent champions. Locke is a welcome return to what players "want."

Locke straddles two worlds; literally. He's an exorcist with a keen knowledge of the occult; someone who exists in both the material plane and a spiritual realm beyond our own. But he also does so in terms of design: his kit, while hyper-mobile, plays like a traditional assassin, reliant on a strong early game and skillful stacking. Then you see his ultimate, where he throws out an AoE slow, but for every champion killed within it, the execution cap increases permanently for the rest of the game. There's no cap; you could theoretically reach 100% execute. It's a prospect that's largely a pipe dream, but it exists.

Locke, then, is a fusion of old school League of Legends meets new school; he's got a more traditional base kit, but a flashy ultimate. He joins the roster in the wake of toplaner Zaahen, and ADC Yunara, both of which also sport somewhat more traditional, mechanics-heavy kits. It seems like, post-Mel, Riot has stripped back its focus on creating new - sometimes broken - mechanics, and is looking to its past. I, for one, don't think that's a bad thing at all.

I ask Lead Game Designer Blake 'Squad5' Smith if this return to more traditional mechanics is intentional - he contributed to Zaahen's kit, too. "When we design any champion, we have different approaches," he says. "One is to make something completely new and give opportunity for expansion of gameplay elements for League of Legends as a whole. The other side of that is giving players something that they just kind of want.

"I think, for a while, we were focused more on unique, more out there elements," he continues. "But recently we kind of realized that we actually haven't made some of these champions for our core audience in a while. Yunara was that, Locke is that. This is for a playerbase that wants something that is familiar to them, but still new enough that it feels like a new experience, but isn't necessarily trying to reinvent the class or anything like that."

I ask how you design that champion experience: how do you balance that shiny newness with creating a more traditional kit? "I've got this thing that I've focused on, especially as the Lead of Champion Design: experiential uniqueness," Smith says. "There's uniqueness as far as a champion doing new mechanics, like Mel, but I think the most important thing is that, when you're playing as the champion, it feels distinct and unique from other champions. That's the main thing that we focus on when we're not trying to do something like a big, new mechanic.

"It's like 'okay, when taken as a whole this champion feels very distinct in and of itself,' and Locke fits that criteria with his pattern - he has the setup with the nails into the cash out, he has the AoE ultimate that seals [enemies] away. These mechanics are known to League of Legends, but when you're playing as assassin Locke, he feels distinct from the other assassins in the game. That's the main important thing that we try to look for."

Locke being an assassin is equal parts terrifying and exciting. We haven't really seen a new assassin since the addition of Naafiri in 2023, and even then, she's an AD champion, not AP. Assassins will always be controversial - their high-risk, high-reward playstyle is hard to master and, in turn, combat: a good assassin player can easily wipe out the tankiest of toplaners. It's a class that divides the playerbase down the middle, and one that has, for some, been a source of constant frustration.

I ask how the team goes about mitigating power creep, especially in a class that can be so inherently strong, and how it's managed to address some of players' biggest assassin-related frustrations with Locke.

"It's really just about remembering that everything that the character does needs to have some sort of trade-off," he replies. "This character will do something new, something unique, have that powerful moment - every character needs that, right? If a character released in League of Legends and didn't have something that, when you looked at it, you were like 'wow, that sounds really strong,' it would probably not end up being a very fun character. Especially considering it has to compare itself to over 100 other characters that do those things.

"The main thing to say is: 'okay, everything that this champion does, what is the thing that the other player is actually supposed to do in this scenario? What are the weaknesses that the character has that mitigate its strengths?' As long as we keep that in mind, that's the main thing that makes sure the character doesn't end up being too egregious.

"I will say, assassins are definitely a more visible class in terms of player frustration, and the things that they do I think are generally very frustrating: they're very obvious about how they kill you and approach it, and it can sometimes feel like there's not great answers to them. I'm not trying to claim that Locke won't be frustrating for players because I think, as an assassin, he will be," he laughs. "But hopefully he won't be significantly over the line."

Visually, the team has worked to make Locke's abilities easier to read than some other characters, so I ask if this is in response to some of that aforementioned frustration. "We've been looking at the assassin class and the frustration that a lot of the champions like Zed have in the space. When we're making a new assassin, part of the thing that was called out by our leadership that we wanted to do was identify the elements that we think are a type of frustration that are unacceptable.

"The reason I specify is, as I said before, we know that an assassin killing you is frustrating; that's not something that we're not claiming. But there are things about some of the assassins that we think probably go over the line in terms of causing a level of frustration for players that is more than what we would want. One of the big things that we identified was trackability as far as the kit goes. There are characters that, especially for a newer player, will find it very difficult to understand what they're doing. Something like Zed's Shadows is probably a big reason why Zed is one of the higher-banned champions in the game and one of the ones that players would call out as a frustrating character. It's very hard to check what he's doing; he has multiple positions on the field that he can go to; he's blinking around, so you can't actually tell what he's going to do.

"Those are the sorts of things that end up being hard for players to understand, so we wanted to make sure that Locke was clear in terms of what he could do to you and his signalling for that. That's how we ended up with the gameplay around the nail mark, into the follow-up to kill you, or the execution mark that's an AoE that sort of announces that he's going to try and kill you. When you look at Locke, he's sort of telling you what he's about to try to do to you, and that should give you the opportunity to make plays against it. But we also want Locke to feel like he has the ability to follow through on those kills, so that's the delicate balance there."

I ask, jokingly, if Smith and the team are ready for the inevitable 'ultimate OP comments,' and he laughs. "Definitely. Players should be calling that out as something that sounds really powerful because it is, and that's what you want to play Locke for."

Locke releases in League of Legends on Wednesday, June 14, alongside patch 26.13. Check out our full rundown of Locke's abilities, with some additional comments from Riot. Even the team knows he's stylin'.