Valorant Episode 3, Act 1 is going live on June 22nd, 2021, and Riot Games sent us some exclusive details ahead of time. The new Agent 17 coming to the game is named KAY/O and he is classified as an Initiator.
Along with this bit of intel, the developers answered some pertinent questions about KAY/O, his abilities, and the lore behind it all.
They have also revealed all the abilities this new Agent will have in Valorant. This is brilliant news for fans, as Episode 3 is merely days away.
KAY/O will introduce a different breed of Agents coming in Valorant, equipped with abilities to destabilize the enemies!
This also marks the first time Riot Games has added suppression abilities in Valorant. It will be interesting to see how KAY/O will make a "diff" in-game.
Want to know more about the Agent? Don't worry, we got you covered! Here are all the details revealed by Riot Games ahead of time.
Official Release Date
KAY/O is officially joining all the other Agents in Valorant from June 22, 2021. That being said, the Agent will need to be unlocked first, and players can do it either by purchasing the levels with in-game microtransactions or grinding the Agent's contract.
Now that we know KAY/O is coming, let's figure out how he will K.O opponents in-game.
Valorant: Welcome the new Agent, KAY/O
Riot Games sent us several images and concept art for KAY/O which will allow players to understand his role in Valorant.
KAY/O, as the description says, is a war machine built to combat entities with supernatural abilities, i.e Radiants. Phoenix, Jett, Reyna, Yoru, all of these Agents are empowered with self-sufficient kits, and KAY/O is here to suppress them all. He was created with only one purpose, which is to neutralize Radiants.
KAY/O abilities cripple the opponents and suppress their capabilities to fight back. This creates moments where players can rely on their aim to take down opponents.
Abilities
(E) ZERO/point
KAY/O equips a suppression blade that players can click fire to throw. It sticks on the first surface it hits and then winds up to suppress anyone in the radius of the blast.
(Q) FLASH/drive
KAY/O equips a flash grenade that players can throw at opponents. The flash grenade explodes, but it has a countdown timer of 1.6 seconds. The grenade will blind anyone in the line of sight.
The Right Click feature on this ability allows players to throw a charged flashbang. This essentially cooks the flash for 1 second as compared to the cooking time for the Left Click/main fire button.
(C) FRAG/ment
KAY/O equips an explosive fragment that players can throw at opponents. The fragment sticks to the floor and starts a chain of explosions with the most lethal force at the epicentre.
(X) NULL/cmd
KAY/O instantly goes on overdrive mode with polarized Radianite energy that strengthens him, acting like a Combat Stim. His ult also creates lethal energy pulses to emit from his location. Opponents who are hit with these pulses are suppressed for a short time.
If KAY/O dies while in his ult state, he is knocked down and destabilized, allowing allies to stabilize his core and revive him.
KAY/O Ultimate - Dev Speak
When asked about KAY/O ultimate ability and the idea behind it, Valorant's Game Designer, Ryan Cousart spoke at length about concept and story behind KAY/O. He said,
After a few tweaks, the downed state gave us a big opportunity to give the KAY/O his killer robot fantasy, enticing him to move forward and kill, while creating a unique mid round objective if he was downed.
He further added,
I remember, one night, we had just kind of started talking about some of the goals and one of us had said, “eff abilities man, I just wanna frag,” which is how we got to Suppression being what it is today -- allowing players to only have to worry about enemies shooting guns at them without having to worry about their abilities. We got it in game, started testing out a bunch of iterations of this and the rest was history.
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