Arcane: Enter the Undercity

I was more excited for the live Arcane experience than any immersive event in recent memory. Of course, the higher your expectations, the farther they can fall. That ought to give everyone a good sense how the rest of this review is going to play out.

Explaining what Arcane is could get convoluted. Here’s the short version: Arcane: Enter the Undercity is a live immersive experience developed to promote the Arcane animated show on Netflix, which is based on the massively popular video game, League of Legends. I’m not a video gamer, so I didn’t bring any of that background into the experience with me.

Hooked on Shimmer

Even though the live event is ostensibly promoting the Netflix show, the organizers recommend first watching at least 3 episodes (there are 9 total) to familiarize yourself with the world of the Undercity you’ll be entering. So I watched the first three and was very intrigued. When the next 3 released a week later, I was excited to keep going. When the final three came out, I eagerly finished the series, coming away impressed with the characters, visual style, and world-building. The show managed this all while staying accessible to people who didn’t play the game. Since I was now experienced with all things Arcane, I was ready to enter its environs in real life.

The event is produced by Secret Cinema. Normally known for elaborate environments in which they screen films, I think this is their first event of its kind. It made a strong first impression, with the costumed Enforcers patrolling the waiting area under a themed entryway. Even waiting for our time to enter, we still didn’t know what we’d actually be doing. Secret Cinema really took the “secret” part of it to heart. All we got was our assigned “crew” and its corresponding color, along with a character that would guide us in.

Once inside, we got a brief in-character introduction to the rules. Then the “city gates” opened to reveal an artistic interpretation of the show’s opening scene. It was visually impressive but a little hard to see the actors due to the crowd. Still, I knew the show’s plot, so I wasn’t lost. And I was impressed by the sense of grandeur.

Welcome to the Lanes

Beyond THAT, we entered the Undercity proper. It’s a huge set, elaborate and detailed and nearly overwhelming. There are lots of places you’ll want to look. I was intent on sticking to our character guide though, so I followed him to a kind of secret lair inhabited by a major character from the show. Only a handful from my original group stuck with us. The lair was once again impressive. Clearly this entire event had a significant budget behind it.

It’s also here that the event started to break down for me. Entering what I thought was a fairly exclusive private area for members of my “crew,” I was surprised at how crowded it already was. The character in question had so many people around his desk that he had to shortcut his speech to us. Instead, he addressed a group that was previously there and instructed them to fill in us “new recruits” with the information he’d already given them.

We left with this previous group (I guess they’d entered a few minutes before us), and they filled us in as best they could. The new assignment involved splitting up, so I was now with 2 of the first group and nobody from “my” group. In the Undercity once again, more groups had entered, and it was packed, with loud music. I had one thread to cling to, fulfilling my assignment. I found the person I needed (thanks to already watching the show), but I struggled to do what I was supposed to. Every character, including this one, was mobbed with participants. There were at least 200 people in the space, so every actor had a crowd at all times. Somehow we delivered the needed message over the music, and…that’s when the narrative ended for me. This new character said the equivalent of “Good to know, thanks.” With that, the two strangers I was with left, and I was adrift.

Looking for Vi, Found Jinx Instead

After fulfilling my one small assignment, I had no follow-up. I could have gone back and reported my success, but the assignment had multiple parts and I had no idea if the others had been accomplished. Wandering back to the secret lair, I saw it was even more crowded, so I couldn’t ask the “boss” what to do next. I took this time to explore the set’s many details.

Unfortunately, I was just sightseeing. There was no greater purpose to my wandering. I asked some people what they were working on, and they either didn’t hear me, didn’t answer me, or didn’t know what they were doing either. I worked with someone on a mechanism that looked like a puzzle, but we had no instructions and didn’t know what our goal was, so we stopped after a few minutes. There was a blatant puzzle on the wall that I DID solve, but once I got the answer, I didn’t know what to do with it. It was a name, and I didn’t know who needed it. Was I intended to seek out every character and ask them if they needed this particular name for some reason? That felt too clumsy to be correct. It’s probably only intended to be solved by someone tasked with it specifically.

I had learned (through osmosis) that each crew was competing with each other to collect the most “Shimmer” (the drug of choice in the Undercity). I could see people stealing Shimmer from secret caches, each locked with a code. That might have been fun. But the only code I ever got was the code to my OWN crew’s cache, so I didn’t want to steal that of course. Additionally, I could see the crew resetting the Shimmer canisters each time a cache was cleared out. It was necessary, of course, but it did break the immersion and was a little frustrating, since it served as a reminder that other people were stealing Shimmer…but I wasn’t.

Another challenge was that a lot of the participants were dedicated League of Legends fans. Many wore impressive, elaborate costumes. Some costumes were so good that it was a genuine challenge to determine which people were actors in costume that you could talk to, and which were participants like you. One actor, miraculously uncrowded as he walked by, took pity on my friend and I looking lost, and engaged with us. He recruited us to his crew and promptly got into a fistfight with a rival crew boss. It was fun to feel part of something, even if it was the “wrong” crew.

Lost in the Undercity

I remained determined to seek things out and heard that a particular character was the key to getting into a secret location. So I just asked them how. He gave me a moment to find him later, which I did. This resulted in a secret room/scene with one of the lead characters from the show. It was very cool to “find” this, although there was no thematic reason for it. I don’t know who the gatekeeper character was, nor why he was allowing random people into this location. The main activity of the secret area worked best if done by a single person. We all wanted to participate, but the character inside kept reminding us that it works better if only one person does it. So eventually, we kind of gave up and watched one person do the fun part.

Many other activities seemed possible in the Undercity. Two bars and one food stand offered themed food, including vegan options. A kind of modified punching bag straight from the show offered the chance to release some aggression. There were a few puzzles like the ones I mentioned earlier. A huge digital scoreboard was never mentioned by anyone and didn’t seem to play a factor in the evening. There were also some big fights and interactions in the middle of the set, but with so many people packed in, unless you were in a good position when it started, you would likely not be able to see it. I know there was a big fight between major characters, but I was on the far end of the lane that formed for them to fight. So I was far away and looking at it from the end, instead of the side. Which meant I essentially didn’t see how it played out.

For the big finale, one of the main characters marched out and I thought we’d get a kind of a narrative scene to cap off the evening. Instead, she emulated a pose from the show, followed by a non-verbal action that I won’t spoil. People cheered, but I was confused–it didn’t make sense and didn’t seem to connect to the Shimmer War of the evening at all. With that, the show was over, and people had a few minutes to hang out, buy drinks, and take photos before being ushered out ahead of the next show.

Seeking Hextech

As you can tell, the whole event left me frustrated. I felt adrift and unmoored, surrounded by a beautiful set with a lot of possibility. Yet none of the possibilities came through for me, despite trying hard to make things happen. I did get a few interactions with actors, usually in small groups. More often, I was deterred from approaching actors because they were already mobbed. I got no puzzle directions or instructions, despite seeing them all around. And there was no real story to the evening either. I gleaned that the structure of the experience was stealing Shimmer for your crew, but that “story” didn’t have any kind of arc or conclusion.

I’ve mentioned several times how great the set was. The actors and costumes were also generally pretty good, even though a lot of their scenes were more improv than scripted. Another positive was the lack of cell phones. They were either taken, or locked into pouches, so nobody was on their phone. The experience was almost two hours, so if you were enjoying it, you had a good amount of time in the Undercity. Proof of vaccination was required, as were masks. The actors all wore them, as did the guests when they weren’t eating or drinking. I’ve never understood that exception, since multiple patrons considered “eating or drinking” the same as “holding a cup in your hand,” as if that was their excuse to keep their masks pulled down.

I wish I could say it was just me, but so far that doesn’t seem the case. My guest for the evening, a military vet, said the show suffered from “mission creep.” As in, it tried to do so much that it lost focus. A separate friend who works for Riot Games, makers of League of Legends, said his group was so confused they just ended up hanging out most of the time. I think it just comes down to the crowd size. A group this size couldn’t have been playtested well. The planned missions and character interactions just break down with a crowd of over 200. The necessary communication wasn’t relayed effectively, leaving people at a loss.

Another Season

Ironically, this experience promoting the Arcane show let me down, yet I watched the entire show because of it. Now I’m a big fan and spreading the word to friends. So in a weird way, it succeeded in its goal! The show is great! Watch it! It’s already been renewed for a second season!

One more note: There are two ticket tiers, General and Premium. The Press ticket I was graciously given was Premium. The website says this includes an “Exclusive viewing area during the 360 degree audio-visual experience. Additional storylines, private character meets, and missions. Exclusive Premium area and private cloakroom. 1 complimentary drink and 1 complimentary food token.” Of these perks, we did get the food and drink token and the private cloakroom. None of the other perks materialized. Not only did I not have an exclusive viewing area, I was stuck at the back for the finale and could barely see. I had trouble finding regular storylines, let alone additional ones. The area I thought was Premium was soon overrun by anyone with the password, which seemed to be everyone in the show. Considering the Premium tickets costs $70 more than General, I can’t recommend strongly enough to skip this ticket level.

Arcane runs daily, except Mondays, through December 19. There are 3 showtimes daily, and it runs close to two hours, especially if you stick around for photos after the show is over. General tickets are $70 and Premium are $140, before fees. More information, including ticket purchasing, is available on their website here.