I feel like leaks are part and parcel to a fighting game launch these days. Whether that be DLC files mined from the game itself or just an accidental leak on behalf of the developers. Today, we’ve got something from the latter category, as a costume teaser trailer for Riot Games’ upcoming fighting game 2XKO has leaked the appearance of Warwick, League’s resident werewolf.
Now, these are costumes from a trailer advertising future costumes for 2XKO, so this isn’t Warwick’s default appearance but rather costumes inspired by his skins in League or just ideas that the 2XKO developers felt would fit, but even still from his blue fur and actual wolf-like appearance we can assume that this will be the League of Legends version of Warwick and not the Arcane version. Considering how unpopular some of the Arcane designs are, Warwick’s among them, and that Vi and Jinx both take their designs from that show I’m sure this will provide some relief to League fans.
Of course, that doesn’t belay the accusations of this being an “Arcane fighting game” as Warwick is a prominent character in Arcane and I’m sure many people would have preferred some of the weirder characters in League’s roster to make the cut like Tahm Kench or Thresh or Nasus, but Warwick is at least on the wackier end of the augmented humans that Arcane loves.
Werewolves are also consistently popular in fighting games. Both Talbain from Capcom’s Darkstalkers series and Sabrewolf from Iron Galaxy’s Killer Instinct are werewolf characters, and like them I expect Warwick to play very aggressively to lean on his animalistic appearance; given who the 2XKO developers are and what they like, I expect Warwick to very much call on to Wolverine from the Marvel vs. Capcom series as a hyper aggro “blow all resources ASAP” rushdown character.
Sure, these leaks take a bit of wind out of the sails of actual reveals, but the silver lining is that these leaks do drum up some discussion. Just be sure to get excited for Warwick’s actual reveal come the time for trailer.