One year and over 14 million players later, Riot Games' Valorant is a tactical shooter with a bright future ahead of it. Riot Games continues to pump out new content from skins to maps, and there are even plans for Valorant to get a mobile version as well. Since launch, Valorant has also added several new playable agents to the game's roster, with a 16th on the way.
Agents have all different kinds of abilities and personalities, and Valorant's last agent, Astra, was a cosmic Controller with a stellar moveset. After being teased at Summer Game Fest 2021, Valorant has officially revealed its upcoming agent: A robotic Initiator called KAY/O. With some possibly meta-changing abilities, an interesting place in the lore, and a knock-out name, KAY/O's release can't come soon enough.
KAY/O's Abilities
The moveset for Valorant's KAY/O is as follows:
- E - ZERO/point
- Q - FLASH/drive
- C - FRAG/ment
- X - NULL/cmd
ZERO/point is a suppression blade that players can equip. After firing, the blade sticks to whatever surface it hits and suppresses anyone caught in its radius. It can even suppress Ultimate abilities like Jett's Blade Storm. Much like the name suggests, FLASH/drive is a flash grenade that can be thrown in two different ways that determine how long it take before it goes off. FRAG/ment is also self-explanatory, as it's a frag that explodes several times, dealing more damage the closer an enemy is to its center.
KAY/O's NULL/cmd ultimate is pretty interesting, too. He overloads himself with polarized radianite energy, emitting large pulse waves around him that suppress any enemies hit. The ultimate makes KAY/O "Overloaded," which means he gets a Combat Stim benefit, and if he is downed he goes into a destabilized state. Any ally can "stabilize" him, which revives KAY/O with a certain amount of health. This is likely the origin of what many thought was a new downed mechanic coming to Valorant, but it just applies to KAY/O.
Most of KAY/O's kit revolves around preventing enemy agents from using their abilities, forcing the enemy team to rely more heavily on their own gunplay. While his abilities might not be as flashy as Jett's or Reyna's, KAY/O has the potential to really switch up the meta in the game. He might even become one of the most picked agents in Valorant if he is utilized correctly.
KAY/O's Lore Implications
Casual players might be surprised to learn that Valorant has quite a bit of lore for a tactical shooter. Long story short, after an event known as the First Light occurred in a near-future Earth, some people across the world started to develop special abilities, and they became known as Radiants. A shadow organization ended up founding the Valorant Protocol, recruiting different agents from around the world that were either Radiants themselves, or used Radiant technology.
It's now tradition that each new Valorant Episode gets a new cinematic trailer, and Episode 3's "Duality" cinematic really clued fans in to the lore of Valorant. It was revealed that there is a mirror Earth with many of the same Radiants. The Valorant agents from that world are trying to steal radianite from Earth for some unknown reason.
While KAY/O's reveal trailer showcased all his abilities, it also clued players in to the robot's place in the larger Valorant world. Powered by radianite, KAY/O is a robot AI made specifically to neutralize Radiants. Additionally, he is the first AI so far to be inducted into the Valorant Protocol. It seems that KAY/O is using what information he knowns about different Radiants to predict every possible combat scenario. One moment in the trailer takes KAY/O to a burned-down city where he comes face to face with another Valorant agent, Reyna. A particularly chilling moment after KAY/O's "danger" sense kicks in shows him exclaiming that it's "Time. To. Kill. Some. Radiants."
The trailer is purposely vague, but it has some interesting implications for KAY/O's story. Clearly he is made to apprehend and contain dangerous Radiants in the world. It is also possible that KAY/O ends up going rogue, wanting to rid the world of Radiants in general.
In any case, several questions still remain. Who made KAY/O? Was he made in response to the mirror Earth's Radiants? Or as a precautionary measure for the main Earth's dangerous Radiants? Is the Reyna in the trailer from the mirror Earth? It is also unknown if the place where KAY/O faces down Reyna might be a new Valorant map or a destroyed version of one that already exists.
KAY/O definitely have some game-changing abilities and interesting potential as a character, but fans will have to wait for Riot Games to delve even deeper into Valorant's lore for his complete story.
Valorant is available on PC.