Hero-shooter ‘Valorant’ has been in the works for six years

Even though we just learned about Riot Games’ new first-person shooter Valorant officially yesterday, we’ve gotten some new information on the game today courtesy of Reddit.

In an AMA on the r/VALORANT subreddit (transcribed by Reddit user thepixelbuster here), lead game designer Trevor “Classick” Romleski revealed that Valorant, previously known as Project A, has been in development for around six years total (three years R&D and three years of production).

As Ressick is a game designer, he also revealed a lot about how the game will work, including intricate details on recoil, weapon reload times, and even the name of the champions (they’re called Agents). For example, all the weapons have recoil and certain abilities can be affected by recoil and running. Signature effects and abilities like healing depend on the character.

One of the more interesting tidbits is what Ressick says about why each Agent has the same hitbox and health. This is quite the change from other hero-based shooters, which use the differences in hitbox and health to create different classes and strategy.

“Simple answer is we’ve focused on tight, lethal tactical gameplay,” he wrote. “Changing hp or hitbox has significant impact on gameplay and we want agents to be chosen for their toolkits, not passive stats like this.”

Similar to Overwatch, Valorant is also hoping to expand on the characters and the universe not through a single-player campaign, but through other avenues.

“We’re interested in further agent development through other methods over time,” he wrote.

Overall this is looking quite different from League of Legends. Ressick revealed that it’s not even linked to League (it’s a “different IP,” he wrote), so there’s room for a lot of possibilities. It’s interesting to also see how it’s differing already from other hero-based five-vs-five first-person shooters like Overwatch. The focus on abilities and toolkits instead of health is already a huge change. The official website emphasizes that “creativity is your greatest weapon,” and Ressick confirms this by noting how the abilities and the gunplay will work together.

You can check out the AMA for other information, such as other weapon and combat features and even refresh rate (it’s not capped at 144hz).