Riot Games’ long-awaited first-person shooter, VALORANT, was revealed today along with all of its agents and weaponry. One agent is a secretive hunter named Omen. But his name was actually going to be used for a now-scrapped League of Legends champion.
In VALORANT, Omen is a character that uses teleportation and shadows to outplay his enemies. His signature ability has him release an orb that bursts into a sphere that obscures vision—this ability can be charged up to travel even longer distances. His ultimate is even more useful, teleporting him to anywhere on the map.
In League, however, Omen was slated to be a quadruped Void-like champion. But the developers weren’t sure if he was going to be a ranged DPS character or melee. There was a lack of direction for the champion’s design, and as a result, there wasn’t much excitement for his release.
During the process, the developers asked their “decision-makers” if they wanted them to continue with this champion and they weren’t stopped. Tom Cadwell, the head of design at Riot, also said that if they had only pushed those same decision-makers for answers, the dev team wouldn’t have wasted so much time on him.
Ultimately, Omen’s release was replaced with Riven, who has quickly become one of the more popular champions in the game. It also looks like VALORANT’s Omen shares nothing in terms of abilities or theme to the League version, but that’s expected since this is a completely different game genre.
VALORANT will be released this summer. More information and details on the game should become available in the coming weeks.
