At present, Riot Games hasn’t exactly revealed much about the story of Valorant, their upcoming tactical shooter. Given that the game is clearly aiming to compete with CS:GO, story might not seem to be a priority. Indeed, while Riot has insisted that there will be a story, they apparently plan to tell it in-game, in a way that evolves over time and won’t be “overexplaining everything.”
How Riot Games Will Tell Valorant’s Story
According to the Creative Director of Valorant, David Nottingham, Riot’s approach to storytelling in the game will be character-focused and quite minimalistic. “We want to take an approach where we’re not overexplaining everything,” he says; “There won’t be a huge universe page at launch that gives you all this detailed dense backstory. We want to experiment with little ways to sprinkle clues and breadcrumbs into the world.”
This approach sounds extremely reminiscent of Overwatch’s approach to storytelling, which would make a lot of sense. At the end of the day, Valorant is a multiplayer-only, tactical shooter. Like Overwatch, it won’t have a story campaign to play through. Nottingham also points to Fortnite and the way that game has implemented changes to the game’s story over time through updates as an influence on Valorant. Unfortunately, all of this may sound a bit disappointing if you were hoping that Valorant would have an engaging story. On the other hand, if you’re more interested in the core gameplay, it does sound like that will very much be the focus.
That’s not to say that Valorant’s world and characters won’t be interesting. The game is set in a world where a mysterious event, known as First Light, has awoken supernatural abilities in many individuals. Valorant itself is apparently an ogranisation created in response to this, although the details are still very hazy. Of course, while the world and characters may be interesting, the story is unlikely to actually progress much. At least, aside from slow, incremental changes in the same way that Overwatch has done. Hopefully, that won’t be much of an issue for their core audience.