Valorant
In the latest edition of the “State of the Agents”— a series of blogs used by VALORANT Character Developer and Producer John Goscicki as a method of transparency to players on the current state of the agents — the developers threw multiple things in the blog to hint at the new agent’s features and traits. We’ve gathered everything we could find for you about the next agent here.
What We Know
Firstly, we are sure that the new agent will be an initiator— making them the fifth — joining Sova, Breach, Skye, and KAY/O. And as we know, VALORANT likes to theme their agents behind a certain country, most recently Neon from Manila, the capital city of the Philippines. The new agent will be Turkish, although a more specific city is yet to be revealed.
The new agent is the second of the movement called the “future of agents” (the first being Neon, who was released at the beginning of this year) and is the idea of breaking out of the four roles of the controller, duelist, sentinel, and initiator and maximizing the creativity and ability of the coming agents.
The new agent will be heavily focused on information and reconnaissance with a clear goal set: to decrease Sova’s impact and create more competition and viability for other agents. Sova is considered to be one of the strongest agents overall in terms of ability and usage. He is a viable pick on nearly every map and is one of the few agents that are frequently used at the highest level of play.
VALORANT aims to create a wider pool of agent compositions, perhaps ones that exclude Sova, by introducing a brand new information-gathering agent. It’ll be very interesting to see how the pro scene will adapt without the Sova and play compositions on certain maps that heavily rely on him to pinpoint the enemy’s locations or force them out of certain angles.
Possibilities and Predictions
Nothing about their abilities has been revealed just yet, but it should give you “a more intimate feeling when hunting down enemies,” Goscicki wrote.
“Bounty Hunter” was leaked to have been a codename that was added to the game files, but it is unclear if that’s the agent’s name, the name of one of his abilities, or just a draft name.
In the image shown in the blog, Cypher and Sova can be seen on the wall and laptop, respectively. Not to mention the center of focus, the hot cup of tea, but is that really of any significance?
While it is difficult to come to any conclusions, a few theories linger at mind when hovering past the image: Could the new agent be a mixture of both Cypher and Sova?“Our focus early on was identifying unique gameplay differences within the realm of recon/info, and landed in a space that has more “localized” Initiation and recon tools,”States the Agent Producer. What does “more “localized’ initiation and recon tools” mean?
Some theories have pointed to spawnable “living” abilities, similar to that of Skye’s Trailblazer. Others have said that it could potentially be an advanced version of Cypher’s spycam, potentially allowing the new agent to place multiple cameras or sensors around the map and being able to watch enemies in real-time using his laptop. Better yet, the laptop could be used to “hack” into the enemy's bodies, perhaps canceling some abilities (or taking away ultimate charge points), viewing their health, equipped weapons or economy level, and position on the map. Unfortunately, none of this is confirmed, merely theories that seem to be probable.
If truly this new agent will be part of the “future of agents,” it could have groundbreaking abilities that can shift the entire meta of the game. The future of the game may even be Sova-less, as crazy as that may seem now.
Image via State of The Agents March 2022 Edition