VALORANT players could’ve seen special melee weapons for each agent with Riot Games developers revealing each agent had unique melees early in development.
Melee weapon skins are some of the most iconic cosmetic items in VALORANT. Players are willing to spend a bit extra on fancy or unique melee skins to add flavor to their loadout, ranging from normal knives to fantasy-inspired swords or cyberpunk axes. Many players might not know that each agent initially had their own unique melee skin, although this idea was eventually scrapped.
During a Q&A session with associate art director Sean Marino and producer for premium content Preeti Khanolkar, the team was asked about potentially introducing brass knuckles as a melee skin. Much to everyone’s surprise, Marino confirmed that Raze initially had a custom brass knuckle melee skin and that every agent had their own special melee variant.
Other unique agent melee skins included dual-wielding scythes for Omen, a tactical knife for Jett, a Machete for Sage, a butterfly knife for Yoru, and some sort of shock stick for Sova. Killjoy, who was also originally a robot, had a unique Dark Souls whirlgig-inspired saw on her robotic arm, which also looked like a pizza cutter.
The melee weapons also functioned differently than current melee weapons in VALORANT. For example, Raze’s knuckles could break doors on Ascent, adding another unique way to deal with the barriers. It is unclear what special functions the other melee weapons had, but they’re far from what we have today.
Hopefully, we can see special agent melee weapons in the future in VALORANT to recapture some of these exciting features from early development.
