Valorant: What is it and Why it has taken over your Videogame Conversations
If you’re a gamer, you may have seen a ton of sudden chatter about a “Project A”. Then you may have heard about something called Valorant. These are both the same thing. Valorant is a free-to-play “hero-based tactical shooter.” It is set to be Riot Games’ second game ever, following up League of Legends (LoL), one of the top Esports games in the world. You may have heard of it at some point.
Valorant intends to be a new entry into the competitive gaming space, with gameplay that resembles first person shooter game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) while also having hero abilities a la Overwatch. With the prestige that Riot games has with LoL, fans, journalists, casters, and pros across the industry have been teeming with excitement of this upcoming game since its first announcement.
That excitement came to a fever-pitch when the verified Twitter handle for Valorant suddenly popped up, officially naming Project A, followed by gameplay footage from game developers, and a list of the first “Agents” that will be available at launch. Gameplay of the first hero, named Phoenix, was the last of the massive info dump from Riot.
Updated March 12th 2020: The second Agent “Viper” and her abilities have now been revealed.
Currently, Riot Games plans to invite current Esports professional players to an online closed Beta testing period to give a the game a proper trial along with aggressive marketing prior to its Summer 2020 PC release. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, initial plans for Riot to fly in selected pros to a set location to play on LAN were scrapped.