New Valorant cinematic is about the friends we made along the way

Valorant has a surprising amount of lore packed behind the scenes for a game that’s primarily about shooting guns and defusing bombs. Much like Overwatch, Apex Legends, or Rainbow Six Siege, the characters each have unique abilities and backstories. In Valorant, they’re all agents working for an intelligence agency investigating the creation of a mirror universe. This new cinematic, made in collaboration with Blur Studio, shows what a day in their life looks like.

While many of the Valorant cinematics focus on the agents duking it out and attempting to murder one another, this one is much more cooperative. A bunch of the agents are training when they realize the current practice range isn’t up to par. So, agents Raze and Killjoy turn a cute R2-D2-style bot into a murder machine that is a little too tough.

This is a great cinematic partially because it’s so low stakes. There are tons of cute little character interactions throughout the story, like KAY/0 and Phoenix bantering, or Jett and Yoru maintaining a betting streak. The agents only manage to defeat Max Bot through working together, and then they all head out to go on a mission. Sure, it’s a little silly and lighthearted, but it’s also a great introduction to these characters. I’m more interested in figuring out what’s going on with the rest of Valorant’s story.

Riot Games will also release Neon, an electricity-based agent who can sprint and slide across the map, as part of Valorant’s Episode 4 Act 1 update later this week.