Olivia R. June 1, 2020
When Valorant revealed its 11th agent, Reyna, the vampiric duelist appeared to be collecting kills on a new map.
Reyna herself stole the show, with fans trying to figure out how her abilities worked based on the short video accompanying the announcement. Later on, Reyna's abilities were confirmed by Riot employees and the new map shown in the clip was largely forgotten.
Data miners uncover new details about Valorant's Ascent map
Riot declared that there was going to be a fourth map in Valorant once the game officially launched in June. This was a relief to the majority of closed beta participants, who were already tired of the three more simplistic maps available in the game pre-launch.
Later on in April, data miners discovered a fourth map in Valorant's game files. The data miner, known as UlfricTheThird on Reddit, said he found code in the game's backend files that also revealed the new map's name: Ascent.
The dataminer then took it a step further. He extracted several textures, revealing a gondola boat, pizza boxes with Italian writing, street lamps, and a bait and boat shop on the street. After finding these clues, he figured the map was located in Italy, specifically Venice.
Reyna trailer shows off more of new map Ascent
It's hard to ignore Reyna's flashy abilities in the trailer, but some players were able to spot a few interesting things about the map just from that short clip. It looked like the map shown in the teaser, Ascent, was quite similar to the training level, meaning this is the area that was teased through the training area's rift in the sky.
The overview of the trailer's map was finally leaked, and it looks almost identical to the files uncovered by the original hacker. This means that the map in the trailer is most definitely Ascent. Here's the leaked overview:
In the trailer, Reyna starts off by B site, aiming down B main. She falls back to the switch after taking out Cypher, where she takes out two other enemies in an open courtyard.
Next, Reyna is seen in anchor, where she takes down two agents just outside of the courtyard. This secures the team ace.
Riot had teased the new map themselves in a developer update. In the screenshot from the update, it appears they were located in the defender's spawn area of the map during the sneak peak.
Thus far, it seems more than likely that Ascent will be the map available in Valorant upon its launch tomorrow. But it's possible that Riot may be misdirecting fans to keep their fourth map a surprise.