What is Valorant?

We have our first, official look at Valorant, Riot Games’ first-person shooter. It has been hinted at toward the end of 2019 with a great deal of speculation about what it could be and how it was going to play. Now, we have our answer.

Valorant takes place in a near-future Earth, where all of the characters of the game are hypernatural individuals. The maps and locations used in the game take inspiration from several real-world places and different cultures.

Valorant feels like a mixture between Rainbow Six: Siege, Counter-strike: Global Offensive, with a handful of elements from Overwatch. The game has two teams made up of five players on each side, where they compete in a fast-paced match consisting of best-of-24 rounds, with a team attacking and another team defending.

Each character comes with a unique ability. These abilities enhance a character’s role in a fight, not give them a significant advantage or make them an overpowered choice. They can alter your role in a battle, such as having a healer to rely on or someone to revive a downed teammate or someone to build a wall to protect your team while they retreat or regroup.

Every character has access to the same weapons. There are no restrictions. If you find a gun that fits your gameplay, you can give them to every character in the game and use it every match. The weapons you’re allowed to use come from a round-to-round based income economy for your team. This type of gameplay leans into teams communicating with one another to ensure the internal economy benefits everyone.

While Valorant has characters who use a variety of different abilities, the game’s primary focus is the efficiency of a player’s accuracy. You will always be able to beat another player if you consistently land a headshot against them, even if that player is faster than you and can land a few body shots. Three to four shots to a player’s body will take them out, but a headshot is a one-hit kill.

We can expect regular updates to Valorant‘s gameplay as the game’s fanbase grows and the competitive scene comes to life. Right now, we don’t have an exact projection of how many characters, new weapons, maps, or gameplay modes Riot Games plans to release for Valorant‘s future.

Valorant releases to the PC sometime in summer 2020. We do not have an exact date, and we don’t know if Riot Games plans to release a beta build of the game for the players to test out before it officially releases. For now, we have a handful of useful information, and we’re excited to try the game out when it releases to the public.