Ever wondered which 2XKO character came first? Thanks to a new dev chat, we finally know.

A new dev chat on the official 2XKO Twitter account has revealed an interesting bit of info about the game's development. This reveal is the order in which the first four champions - Ekko, Ahri, Darius, and Yasuo - were developed. Is it merely trivia? Or is it an interesting peak into the design process? Let's dig in and find out.

The developer behind this influx of interesting dev deets is none other than Maxine Virtue, a 2XKO core gameplay initiative producer and a new member of the team we've yet to see in official comms until now. To start with, she breaks down what occurs when the team begins designing a new champion.

"Every time we start a new champ, our designers definitely reference League (of Legends). We learn the lore, what moves they have [...] and we try to design a kit that translates into a fighting game." We learnt a little bit about this process in relation to Yasuo back when we interviewed Alex Jaffe at Evo 2023, but this is the first time a clear and generalized process has been spelled out for the public.

Then Virtue gives us the juicy character development order, and the first pick may surprise you! "Why we chose to start with Darius as our first real character in 2XKO is because he doesn't have attacks that are too fast or two slow. So he's basically a really good character to set the foundation for the game."

Then came Ahri, which according to Virtue was because the character had "super high mobility and simple projectiles" that allowed the team to flesh out the 2XKO projectile system. With those two established as "prototype characters", the team then seems to have shifted the design process towards expanding the roster towards various archetypes.

After this comes Ekko, an all-rounder with quick normals that allow him to get into brawls regardless of range, and Yasuo, who Virtue states is a "character that we want [to be] relatively easy for beginners to pick up one", but with a kit that gets more complicated the more you dive into it.

Some of you may remember super early video captured of champions like Jinx and Katarina floating around in the days back when the game was called Project L. Well, it's safe to say those were prototype characters from back when the game still wasn't locked in as a 2v2 fighter. Once the team knew what kind of fighting game they were making, then built full-on prototype characters (Darius and Ahri) to get a sense of how the game would play. From there, with the pace and core mechanics figured out, the team could start thinking about the wider roster.

This was the first 2XKO dev chat following the promise of further updates in the wake of the 2XKO name reveal. It looks as though smaller informal insights into the game can be expected to fill the gaps between major reveals, like what many are expecting from Evo Japan in April.

We've embedded the dev chat above. Give it a watch and let us know what you think of it!