What is Happening in Valorant Recently?

Written by: Cade Fergusson

(Image of the Valorant Loading Screen)

Valorant is a first person PVP shooter game that has been out for 5 years, that came out in 2020 and has gained much popularity in years since. For many years, Valorant has been more of a unique game with many animations & visual effects with getting kills, and special abilities for each character you use; but in the past 2 years, they have stepped it up a notch by introducing Unreal Engine 5, which is a very powerful gaming engine which makes the visuals more enhanced.  

Riot Games (the company that created Valorant) does plan to keep upgrading and making their game as good as possible, advancing their graphics, animations and more. When they first introduced these changes to the game, there were mixed reactions from the player base.

Many people liked the new changes, with better graphics and more colorful and unique and intractable animations, it makes the game feel more alive. But the downside to more updates and greater graphics, is more storage use. 

Valorant is about 30 gigabytes of storage, which isn’t too much compared to other games like RDR2, but it is still significant. Valorant is known as a more “Cartoony” game, so the visuals are more prioritized, but Riot still wants to optimize their game for other players that don’t have a good setup. While their in-game settings for graphics can help enhance your experience, depending on how good your computer setup is, can greatly affect how your game runs.

(Image from Reddit thread about "performance issues")

Some people on Reddit are saying how the “Ultra Realism” is ruining the game, because their PC’s can’t handle it. Valorant is a first person shooter game, which means that in these types of games: Every. Frame. Counts. When playing games like Valorant and/or CSGO, it is beneficial to have a fast reaction time to be able to counter opponents; but if your PC isn’t able to keep up with other players with better Specs, then you are kind of screwed. 

But other people say otherwise, with data and facts from the updates themselves, with a quote from an article about the EU5 updates stating, “Valorant Dev says Unreal Engine 5 initially broke the physics, but overall, the upgrade has been a success.”

Overall, Valorant’s community is mixed with the new changes, content creators are happy because their videos can be higher quality looking with the new graphics, and other players aren’t happy because their storage is being filled even more. 

Personally, I like the game being somewhat more vibrant and more realistic because it makes me feel satisfied with playing, but how other players like the game depends on what they enjoy more: Realism or Good Performance.