Valorant agent 23 is still months away, but Riot Games has chosen to whip fans up with a surprise teaser image.
Riot’s tactical shooter is maintaining its pace of releasing a new agent every four months. Gekko’s recent release completely rocked the meta, and the developer still has plenty of time to create a suitable follow-up. Even though Valorant agent 22 isn’t expected to come out until July 2023 at the earliest, Riot has given fans a teaser image showcasing the agent’s aesthetics. Here’s what was shown, what it could mean, and whether it matches up to previous data mined info.
The teaser image was revealed as part of a new player card. The image appears to show some kind of machinery with barely-legible text around the edge. The center is dominated by an ambiguous blue tornado.
The biggest hint is the text on the right side of the capsule. It seems to read 008, which points to the next Valorant agent officially being Agent 8 in the lore. Number 8 has been missing from the game since launch, with Agent 7 Sage skipping straight to Agent 9 Phoenix. There are other serial codes and labels visible, but the 008 marker is the only real clue to their identity.
Does the Valorant agent 23 teaser disprove the leaks?
There are no clear connections between the Sequoia data mine leak and the official Valorant agent 22 teaser, but that doesn’t rule out all connections.
Before this teaser dropped, clever fans discovered filenames in the game’s code for a new character codenamed Seqouia. Social media hints also pointed to Nick Wu, who also created Fade, as the agent’s lead designer. In our analysis, we broke down what Sequoia could be both aesthetically and mechanically. However, the image of long-living west coast redwoods shares little in common with this futuristic contraption.
The only link is age. The image could depict a sort of cryogenic freezing chamber, which are often used in science fiction to preserve human life for the future. The next agent could be impossibly old, forced to live in cryostasis. There’s also the possibility that Seqouia was a red herring codename with no relation to the actual agent. With the first official teaser for Valorant agent 22 already out, fans shouldn’t have to wait long before learning more.
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