Valorant developers open up about inspirations and League of Legends developers' contributions behind new Duelist agent, Neon

Valorant's latest Duelist agent, Neon, is set to arrive on 11 January 11 2022, alongside the Episode 4 Act 1 update.

Neon can take the enemies down faster than the speed of lightning, with her bioelectric radiance. Her fast mobility and abilities based on electric charges makes her a perfect fit to enter-frag and take aggressive fights all alone.

Moreover, many have found similarities between Neon and League of Legends’ new champion, Zeri, as they share a heavy resemblance. In fact, both are voiced by the same person, Vanille Velasquez.

This is because both the Valorant and League of Legends teams worked hand-in-hand to create Neon. Thus, Neon and Zeri are designed very similar. However, the developers haven't revealed any link between the two yet.

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Valorant devs talk about inspiration behind Neon’s creation

Ryan “rycou” Cousart, Valorant’s Game Designer at Riot Games, spoke about how the League of Legends’ developers came up with the idea of creating an agent to “sprint fast.”

It was August Browning, League of Legends’ Lead Champion Designer who originally suggested it. Later, Jay Watford, League of Legends’ Game Designer joined in to help in giving Neon a finishing touch. Ryan shared his experience working with them and mentioned:

“I remember when August Browning had originally come to us with this idea for having an Agent with the ability to sprint fast on a basic ability—I had lots of reasons why I thought it would be an insurmountable amount of work to achieve it. The goal we had aligned on for Neon was that she would move fast and her utility should supplement.

Reflecting on his interactions with Watford and August, Ryan further revealed:

After seeing how far it had gone with Jay Watford and August before I hopped on to take it to the finish line, I was so excited to see how well we had hit the goal of having abilities that pair well with going fast that it left the prototype phase with basically the same kit!”

Furthermore, John “Riot_MEMEMEMEME” Goscicki, Valorant’s Character Producer at Riot Games, also shared the inspiration behind designing the Filipino duelist. He said,

“Speed, everything about Neon came back to that feeling of running forward and moving fast. A lot of her design was inspired by athleisure clothing, sprinting gear, and a runner's physique. We also looked into the kind of bioelectricity you see deep in the ocean. This provided us with a nice foundation for some unique shapes and movements within her lightning.”

Neon is expected to bring a massive change in the current Valorant meta, which has been dominated by Jett for a long time. The Valorant community is excited to get a hands-on experience with the new Duelist agent as soon as it releases.