Riot Games revealed Yasuo as Project L's fourth playable fighter ahead of the upcoming fighting game's playable demo at EVO 2023.
Late last month, Riot broke the news that Project L would be receiving a demo at EVO this year with four playable characters. The Los Angeles-based studio behind League of Legends and Valorant also announced that its next eSports venture would feature tag-team mechanics, allowing for up to four people to play in a single match in the same video.
At the time, only three playable characters — also all originally from League of Legends — were announced: Ahri, Darius, and Ekko. Riot promised fans that this fourth character would be revealed in time for the demo, but provided no further information on the topic until his reveal this morning.
One blade, one purpose. Yet this steel doesn’t get any lighter.
— Riot Games (@riotgames) August 4, 2023
Play Yasuo, the Unforgiven, along with Darius, Ekko, and Ahri at #Evo2023. pic.twitter.com/Tasgf0TqQm
The reveal video debuts the character with a flashy new trailer, teasing some of the things the swordsman is capable of before getting into an overview of the four-champion roster that breaks down some more nitty-gritty details about each character, including Yasuo.
Lead Champion Designer Alex Jaffe highlighted Yasuo's skilled swordsmanship and his ability to manipulate the wind. Jaffe further explained how the character's "versatile stances," and "big normals" would make him an especially potent threat — or valuable teammate — on the battlefield.
First released way back in 2013, Yasuo has been part of League of Legends' cast for almost 10 years now. According to U.GG, a website that uses Riot's internal data to collect statistics on the MOBA, Yasuo is the tenth most-picked champion in League of Legends overall. The champion also holds the highest ban rate among the top-ten most popular picks in League, meaning that he might actually rank higher on the list if he didn't get banned so frequently.
Riot isn't the only studio taking advantage of the biggest stage in fighting games to promote its upcoming release, however. Mortal Kombat 1's getting its first publicly-playable demo and a number of studios like Arc System Works, Capcom, and Bandai Namco are expected to make big announcements like character reveals at the world's biggest fighting game tournament.
Keep an eye on IGN over the weekend as we cover all of the news coming out Evo 2023.
Charlie Wacholz is a freelance writer at IGN.
