The closed beta for Riot Games' upcoming online multiplayer shooter Valorant is live and is already extremely popular. In the past several days, Valorant's Twitch viewership has climbed to around 1.6 million. That's a record claimed only by two other games, Fortnite and League of Legends. Capitalizing on the audience, Riot is already revealing upcoming new content for Valorant in the form of new agent Raze.
Raze was officially revealed via a sponsored livestream on Twitch, hosted by TimTheTatman. The streamer first revealed Raze's look and then broke down each of agent's abilities for the first time. He also confirmed that Raze was now fully playable in the Valorant beta. She isn't automatically unlocked, though. Valorant players will have to earn her by playing the game.
The kit for Raze is really impressive and is certain to be popular with aggressive, offense-focused Valorant players. Like other agents, She has four abilities. Boom Bot is a small deployable robot that will focus on an enemy and explode if it reaches them. Blast Pack is like C4, in that it can be stuck to walls and then remotely detonated. Paint Shells is a cluster grenade that explodes into smaller grenades after thrown. Finally, Raze's ultimate ability grants her a rocket launcher that fires an explosive that does massive damage in a wide area.
As tactical shooter players can already tell, Raze is designed to take on enemies without looking them in the eye. Her explosives allow her to create area-of-effect damage, so she doesn't have to peek quite as far around corners. But at heart, she's a duelist. She doesn't provide support abilities or game knowledge. She provides damage. If she's not killing enemies, her kit isn't being used fully.
This isn't the first time Raze has been shown, technically. Raze's visuals and the names of her abilities leaked over the past weekend. The latest news confirms exactly what her abilities do and that she's playable.
Raze is certain to be just the first of many agents coming to Valorant over the coming months and years. Her addition to Valorant's roster brings the total Agents in-game to 10, with two more said to be coming between now and the game's expected launch this summer. And Valorant agents are certain to be just a part of Riot's plans for future content. There's clearly a bright future for Valorant and Raze debuting on the game's closed beta launch day should be remembered as the start of it all.
Valorant releases summer 2020 on PC.