The story behind Valorant's latest Recon Butterfly Knife

Riot Games recently introduced the Recon Weapon Skin Collection in Valorant.

Valorant’s implementation of impressive weapon cosmetic skin has been one of the best. From WWII-inspired Infantry to the Steampunk, Victorian-era-inspired Magepunk to the nerf-inspired BlastX, Valorant has had some fantastic weapon skin collections to marvel at.

With the new Recon Weapon Skin, Valorant brings modern combat inspiration to the game. The collection also introduces a new melee weapon type in the form of the Butterfly Knife.

---

Riot Games introduces the butterfly knife in Valorant

The credit behind making the Butterfly Knife famous in modern gaming perhaps goes to Counter-Strike the most. The fun of flipping the melee weapon around with its multiple moving parts looks really cool and feels fun.

Patch 3.04 makes it easier on observers, with updates to a number of features and gameplay tech. Bug fixes for a few Agents like Omen and KAY/O are also included. See Patch Notes here: https://t.co/SU5EKgYY3n pic.twitter.com/C4F92rFRAg

— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) August 24, 2021

Speaking about the experience of bringing the melee weapon to Valorant, Sean Mario, the art lead, said:

"Recon naturally was one of the more highly anticipated skins we were developing due to the fact that it has a butterfly knife. We always knew that this would be a thing we would give players and it was really incredible to see it all come together with this skin. We spent a lot of time looking at videos of butterfly knife tricks, seeing how other games have implemented them, and really just dug deep into delivering on an awesome experience. We just kept building on it every step of the way, knowing, of course, we would have the flair of flipping the knife around in the equip and inspect, but eventually, we said “let’s just add it to everything!” and included it as part of the attacks when the weapon comes back to rest. Because the skin is something that is a bit more grounded we had to strike that balance of the animations being interesting and fun but not too playful and over the top. Once we had all of the animations in place it was just really fun for everyone to walk around in-game spamming their equips, inspects, and attacks to just watch the knife spin and flip in the character’s hands."

---