It’s an age-old question in videogames: can you pet the dog? In fact, there’s an entire Twitter page dedicated to hunting down pettable pooches across gaming. Thanks to the Naafiri petting mechanic, the newest League of Legends champion will finally see Riot’s hit MOBA game join this exclusive club.
As showcased to press by Riot during a recent dev Q&A for Naafiri’s abilities, you can not only pat her on the head, but you can also ruffle the fur of her neck, before she flops onto her back, tongue out, in anticipation of some good ol’ belly rubs. This is, undoubtedly, the perfect antidote to the red carpet of losses we all eventually succumb to during our LoL ranks climb.
Unfortunately, Riot did not specify exactly how players can utilize this all-important mechanic, but we’ll certainly be heading straight into the practice tool once Naafiri arrives on LoL patch 13.14.
Alongside Naafiri, 2023 has also produced other pettable pups like Final Fantasy 16’s Torgal, as well as the not-so-doglike boglings in Star Wars Jedi Surivor. Needless to say, she’s in elite company.
We have a pretty hard and fast rule here at The Loadout: if you can pet the dog, your game immediately becomes one of the best games of all time. Okay, maybe that isn’t quite the case, but Riot clearly knows what the people want – and by ‘people’ we mean us.