Last year, publisher and developer Riot Games expressed its intention of branching out from MOBA phenomenon League of Legends into new territory. Free-to-play shooter Valorant, previously known as Project A, is one of the titles part of that effort.
Here’s everything we know about free-to-play shooter Valorant, including information on its release date, gameplay, trailers and more.
Valorant Release Date
While developer Riot Games didn’t reveal Valorant’s release date just yet, the title is currently aiming for a broad Summer 2020 release window.
Prior to Valorant’s Summer 2020 release, eager players will have a chance to try it out during its beta phase which, sadly, also doesn’t have a set start date at the moment.
Valorant Story
There wasn’t much mention of anything story-related during Valorant’s reveal, aside from the action being set in a near-future version of Earth, the majority of the focus landing on its skill-driven gameplay.
That being said, Riot has a precedent of developing rich lore for gameplay-oriented free-to-play titles with League of Legends, so there’s plenty of potential to see the seeds of a new universe be planted with Valorant’s different character bios.
Valorant Gameplay
The first look at Valorant’s gameplay does reinforce its focus on skill and strategy. Judging from its first gameplay video, which featured two teams of 5 going against each other in a match that focused on planting/defusing a bomb, you could describe it as Counter-Strike meets Overwatch.
At the start of each round, you get to choose one of Valorant’s characters which you’ll use for the entirety of the match. Matches last for 24 rounds, sudden death settling potential ties.
Like with Counter-Strike, playing earns you money which you can use to purchase weapons and equipment in between rounds. Each of Valorant’s characters come with four abilities, two of which must also be purchased using money.
Valorant seems to focus more on precise gunplay rather than powerful abilities, at least judging from its gameplay preview. The time-to-kill seems to be relatively short, while headshots are lethal.
Players will be able to choose between a knife, several pistols, SMGs, assault rifles, sniper rifles, shotguns, and heavy machineguns in terms of weapons.
Abilities further expand on the available arsenal with the addition of floating blades, bows and more.
On top of this, developer Riot outlines its focus on Valorant’s competitive aspect with the following list of features:“128-tick servers, at least 30 frames per second on most min-spec computers (even dating back a decade), 60 to 144+ FPS on modern gaming rigs, a global spread of datacenters aimed at <35ms for players in major cities around the world, a netcode we’ve been obsessing over for years, and a commitment to anti-cheat from day one”.
Valorant System Requirements
Valorant’s system requirements have yet to be shared, however, if the above promises hold, we can expect them to be accomodating to both new and older machines.
We’ll keep an eye open and update this section with any relevant info as soon as we learn more about Valorant’s system requirements.
Where can you buy Valorant and how much does it cost?
Valorant is a free-to-play title, which means you won’t need to buy it in order to play. If other Riot games are anything to go by, Valorant will have its own separate launcher and won’t be available on storefronts like Steam.
As it’s a free-to-play game, it will likely feature microtransactions alongside the ability to unlock characters through playing.
