It seems to be a great time for VALORANT fans who have spare change lying around since Riot Games has officially unveiled its second batch of the Oni skin collection. Complete with expanded offerings for the Vandal, Bulldog, Ares, and Frenzy, the second Oni bundle is also set to include a katana melee skin that will debut new animations in VALORANT.
Perhaps lost in all the buzz surrounding the eye-catching reveal, however, is one feature that Riot confirms will be unique to the new set of Oni skins—custom firing audio.
On Reddit today, Riot lead cosmetics producer Preeti Khanolkar shed some extra insight on how the new Oni weapon skins will indeed be enhanced with some extra SFX this time around.
“There is firing audio, unlike original Oni,” Khanolkar wrote. “But it’s subtle because we wanted it to feel good for people who preferred the default sound of original Oni (so it’s not as prominent like it is for skins like Araxys, for example).”
Elsewhere in the same thread, Khanolkar mentioned that it is a bit hard to hear the new firing effects due to the music and other flashy stuff going on in the new Oni trailer, so players should check it out in full force once the collection is available in the game.
In the two-minute trailer, the custom firing audio of the upcoming Oni skins does appear to sound, as advertised, like “ghostly corrupting echoes.”
Of course, the community’s reception to the addition may differ once players actually get to use the new guns in VALORANT matches. But, in the meantime, it seems Riot may have succeeded in striking a fine balance in giving the new Oni skins some extra flavor that many wanted with the first release, while also keeping the “aimbot feel” that the original offerings were able to deliver.
On Reddit, Khanolkar also confirmed that the team did decide to stick with the same extra color variants seen with the first Oni bundle—gold/black, pink/mint, and blue/white—to “make sure fans of the original Oni could build on their collection to have it all look uniform.”
The second Oni bundle will officially launch at the start of VALORANT Episode Six, Act Three on March 7.
