A bizarre VFX in Valorant is throwing players for a loop as many believe it could be teasing Agent 14 in the game, who could have abilities linked with some form of trickery or invisibility.
The 1.9 gigabyte update for Valorant’s 1.14 patch has introduced myriad improvements across the game while implementing Snowball Mode and changing up some features on maps like Icebox.
After the patch went live, however, one player found an interesting effect on Icebox just before his custom game started – and it could be the first teaser for the Agent we’ll see in Episode 2 Act 1.
Before the round kicked off, user ‘colagraag’ noticed there were footsteps crossing the opening in front of Defender’s spawn, with unique sounds & visuals that were enough to light up speculations.
Next agent easteregg?@ValorLeaks @floxayyy @ValorantUpdates pic.twitter.com/UquH8sdw2D
— yami (@yaamival) December 8, 2020
Starting at A Screen and going all the way to B Hut, you can see something walking across the way until it makes its exit stage right. With every step, you can hear a splash of some sort with a puddle of dark ink rising from the floor.
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From where it first starts to where it eventually ends, it takes about five seconds to complete the animation. This is about the same amount of time an Agent would take to retrace its footsteps if they had their knife out.
The effects are being tied to a previously leaked/teased Agent under the name ‘JLATTE’ or ‘Jhons Latte,’ according to user ‘ConstantVLRNT.’ The leaks also included words like ‘footsteps_spikes_foe’ and ‘jlatte_Decoy_Footstep.’
This could either be a teaser for a spectre-like character that has a form of invisibility included in their kit or a specific ability actually being used.
According to the previous leak, this could be a misdirection Ability that an upcoming character could fire with the intent to give opponents false footsteps in the direction it’s activated, since such audio queues are obviously so important in Valorant.
In either case, Episode 1 Act 3 ends in mid-January, which isn’t too far away, so it’s not unrealistic for Riot to be teasing their next Agent. If that is indeed the case, then all eyes will be on the next Act to see what the devs have up their sleeves.