Riot will not implement Xayah & Rakan’s unique shared recall animation in future skins.
The shared recall is one of the most iconic features of Xayah & Rakan’s gameplay in League of Legends. A unique mechanic specific to the lover’s duo allows them to return to their base together. Besides the solo skins, almost every skin they have has a unique shared recall animation.
The first time Riot did not implement a unique shared recall animation was on the Arcana Xayah & Rakan skins, which were released in 2022. Fans were quite disappointed at the fact, but Riot promised that they would be implementing it on future skins. Now it seems the newest skins, Broken Covenant Xayah & Broken Covenant Rakan, will also not have unique shared recall animation. And Riot flat-out admitted that the future skins would also not have shared recall animation. Riot developer DW Platypus recently revealed the dev team’s plans to abandon the shared recall animations in the RakanMains subreddit.
The news came as a shock & received tons of backlash from the community. The community also called out Riot for being “Lazy.” But recently, Riot responded to the criticism and explained the reasoning for their decision.
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The Response
Riot Brightmoon, the Executive Producer of League of Legends, reached out to the players after the backlash. He said, “When we created Xayah and Rakan, we wanted to try a lot of new things – a shared recall animation being one of them. It took a lot of work, blending animations from two champs that could come together at any point during either recall. We also didn’t really know if players would care or use it that much, but because of their theme, it was worth it to try something new.”
Many years later, it seems few people use the shared recall animation while using the same skin. That’s why Riot defaulted to using the base shared recall animations for the newer skins. According to Brightmoon, it takes a considerable amount of time to create this unique animation. And for how low the usage is, Riot believes that it would be better to use the time for something more meaningful for more players.
