Riot reveals an intel-gathering Agent like Sova is coming to Valorant

Valorant’s development team has taken the time in their March 29 ‘State of the Agents’ blog to bring a series of juicy details about the upcoming Agent 20 to light. Highlighting that the next character won’t be arriving right away, with “game health” being the team’s top priority for now. 

Fans eager for snippets of information on the enigmatic Agent 20 have been thrown an enormous bone by the development team in the form of a new blog post packed with info, pictures, and hints. John Goscicki, the public face of Valorant’s character production team, gave us a wealth of info about the next addition.

Starting by tempering any expectations of immediacy, the dev asked us all to “remember, new Agents take 12–15 months to develop”. During this process, he explained how the team focuses on three major questions when working on what to add next.

“What is missing from current, core playstyles? Are there thematics that present big opportunities? What’s needed for game health?”

Riot Games

A cup of Turkish tea gives hints as to the new Agent’s origins.

John used the post to give us all a firm idea of how the character team seeks to answer those questions with Agent 20.

“There have been a lot of conversations within the Characters team around Initiators, specifically Sova,” he said. “His Initiation tools are unique in that they rely on reconnaissance and information gathering to give you and the team tools to decide your next step.”

While this alone would be enough to plant the idea that Agent 20 will have information gathering skills, Goscicki cemented it by clarifying “the notion of another Agent that revolves around the information gathering aspect of the tactical loop has, for a while, been top of mind for us.”

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Setting the tone for secrecy around too much information on the intel-gathering agent, John left us with this morsel about how the character will feel to play: “This next Agent should give you a more…intimate feeling when hunting down enemies,” he teased.

“Of course, there is our theme—but the thought of giving away too much frightens me so I’ll leave that out.”

Despite the furtive nature of the post, there have are a couple of major points that can be gleaned for anyone interested in the character’s backstory, or of the development of in-game lore.

The first being the Turkish design on the cup of tea in the picture attached to the blogpost, combined with the jpg title as embedded onto the website being named ‘Lokum’. This is the Turkish term for Turkish delight, the famous rose-flavored sweets.

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Looking at the above info, with the Turkish sign-off in the post itself “Herkesin bir korkusu var” (this is Turkish and roughly translates to “everyone has a fear”) it should be safe to assume that Agent 20 is of Turkish origin.

We’ll keep our eyes peeled for any more info to arise on the Agent, and will be quick to update you as more information is released.