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Riot Games announced the Ahri ASU (Art & Sustainability Update) back in August during the Lol Pls: Champions and Preseason 2023 video. Today in a developer blog, the developer revealed some of the changes they would be making to the Nine-Tailed Fox. The Ahri ASU will not change the character’s abilities or lore but instead focuses more on cleaning up the art style of the model. This will help make the task of developing skins for Ahri easier for Riot. This includes changes to both the model, VFX (Visual Effects(, and audio (how the champion’s abilities sound when cast).
A closer look at the Ahri ASU
Ahri’s base model, animation, and abilities have gotten a makeover. Riot took inspiration from the New Dawn cinematic, her Wild Rift turntable, and its Ruined King game to arrive at the final model. The developer tried to retain her "innate Vastayan grace" while also letting her wild side come through. While Ahri retains a more or less human appearance, her nine tails show her Vastayan descent and make up a large part of her silhouette. While League of Legend’s bird's-eye view poses a challenge for animators to make champions expressive, Ahri’s tails do a great deal in actively expressing her personality and nuances. According to the developer, “Charm is one of Ahri’s most iconic abilities, and we really wanted to use the tails to make the iconic moment even more impactful.”
Ahri’s ASU also focused on revamping her audio to fit the “modern League aesthetic”. Riot focused the new audio more on the spirit magic inside Ahri with fiery sound effects while still trying to make it sound different than Annie or Brand’s fire SFX (Sound Effects). Due to the sheer number of Ahri skins the developer has to work on, the champion ASU is scheduled to go live next season.
