2XKO is closing in on its closed beta on Sept. 9, and fans are eager to check out the eight starting characters, including VI. The roster, however, has faced criticism from some fans online, who claim the chosen characters are too similar and overly humanoid.
So, when Destructoid had the chance to talk to 2XKO's game director Shaun Rivera at Evo 2025, we had to ask precisely what was behind these eight humanoid characters and if he could talk about the direction when choosing which characters to add to the game.
When discussing the starting roster, Rivera was very candid about his aspirations for the team and what he would ideally like to achieve in the future.
"I wanna start by saying, of course, humanoids are easier, right?" Rivera told Destructoid. "And so, for us, we know everybody wants a larger roster, so we want to get a lot more characters into the game. We're working hard on that. But also I kind of want to take a step back for a second and recognize that League of Legends, the IP, has just an insane amount of variety when it comes to mechanics, thematics, and also size and shape, right? And I think over time, we want to take advantage of that."
Rivera also spoke about how so many characters for the starting eight are from Arcane, and Rivera agreed how the team couldn't not take advantage of the popular TV show when deciding who to add first.
"I think it would be unfair to say we don't consider that at all, but I think there's a reason that these characters are in Arcane to begin with, right?" Rivera commented. "They're relatable. They have amazing stories and kits. And when we see them, we're like, what could we do in a fighting game with them? We get mad, excited, you know? And so, I would say that's a small consideration. But really, we think these characters are freaking amazing."
Rivera went on to say that when creating a character, the team focuses on roles and characters that they believe people will fall in love with and make into their main focus. He feels the mechanics of each character are important as well as the thematic diversity, and used VI as an example of that, saying that "VI, for example, I love boxing. I just want to punch the hell out of somebody. I want to sway a little bit. This is my character, you know, and same with all of our characters, really, we want to find something that people will latch on to, that they'll they'll love, they'll be able to explore, and then go
from there."
Rivera stated that the ideal number of characters the team would want to be at was 10, and that it wants to make characters more quickly, especially during the closed beta period.
"It might be obvious, but I really want to call it out. This isn't like, you know, our fourth or fifth or sixth fighting game in the sense that, like, yeah, we have some designs we can use, and we can polish them up a bit, [but] we're making everything from scratch," Rivera said. "But we're also a team that's learning as we go, and we're going to learn a lot come September 9 in closed beta... We're growing as a team. We're making these from scratch, and we also want to make sure they're really deep, right? You can pick it up and have fun, but through playing, you can also explore a lot. So yeah, we want to make more quickly. We want to build that roster up for sure."
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