Early Development and Changes:
Now, there are some things to suggest that development started as early as 2013, but we can only place an estimate on the footage. Right now, I'm going to say maybe around 2014, they were testing early Raina development. I mean, look at that, dismissed! Look at the random effect instead of an orb, there's a little bit of a flame. Look at the Guardian and the scope, look at the map, there are a million things we could dissect on how different the game was, and man, oh man, was it different. Even Kiljo was originally supposed to be a robot with what looks like to be a hammer. You could see the turret, you can see the abilities in the bottom, and there's even a random chicken, bro, like, this game was crazy, this game was straight up crazy.
Progression and Polishing:
I will admit, the time in the bottom right from 2014 all the way to release is rent, there's no way to predict when they changed Jet to look how Jet is today, there's no reason to understand when they decided to test out a Beyblade as a spike on the ground, it is insane. Like, just the way Jet looks, the way the guns look, the way the icons look at the top, every single thing about the game looks different. Even the map itself has changed up a ton, it's just insane how far they have come. I mean, even the way, like right, this ghost looks, the way this Vandal looks, it's all extraordinarily different.
Community Reception and Controversies:
Even the kills, right, like there's no skull, it just shows right there at the bottom, it just says kill. You can see the textures here, man, on the site, look crazy different, crazy difference, not even close, even looks like the boxes are way higher there right in front of us and things continue to change. Now, this early part is when, um, I even noticed the UI is yellow when it's with the wall down, but this early part is basically with the earliest content creators who were already established and were able to play, including people like Shroud and other big names, this is what they tested out and I would have loved to play this early right here. This is, I'm pretty sure this is from an exact content creator, look at the buy menu, look at everything everything looks so freaking different. This is actually from a game they were already testing, they were already playing it, this is the first footage we got, even the animations and I'm pretty sure the FOV was slightly adjusted as well, but at this point, things started changing fast, we started getting the official icons, we got the official kill banners at the bottom, things start to polish up pretty rapidly here.
Game Content Updates:
But it's just kind of funny because I remember even when Valorant released like this, in retrospect, it still very much felt like a beta, but eventually the game released and it was pretty much a banger on release, things polished up quick, they changed the colors, the lighting, etc, etc, we got our battle pass when we got our very first episode. Now, there's a lot of hype, but there wasn't as much viewership and overall players as in the early beta thanks to that huge inflated number on the Twitch charts, nonetheless, it did drop in June and Riot did came out swinging, we got Reina almost immediately as well as Spike Rush shortly after, also the only skin and cosmetic I'm gonna mention in this entire video, which I know is a little bit weird to some people, is the Elderflame.
Agent and Map Releases:
Now, Deathmatch is far, far, far, far, far, far from perfect, but with all that being said, hopefully they continue to improve it. Now Killjoy on the other hand was quite the controversial launch before even people got to play or they watched the trailers and judged. I remember infamously Hiko said that the turret would ruin the game, like there were people who were extraordinarily aggressive on Killjoy but in the end lover or hater she was okay, Icebox followed suit, and man oh man this was also controversial.
Reflection on Content Updates:
Now they ended 2020 on a banger which was December where they gave a snowball fight and I'm gonna need to defend it a little bit here and love it or hate it they did something for us um right now at the time of recording this it is December 2022 and it was quite a depressing Christmas for Valorant, no snowball fight, no nothing, basically Swift play and I did enjoy it, I do like Swift play but even the Skins weren't exactly Christmas Christmas and we got no game mode so a little bit of a yikes they fumbled a lot since their early days moving on from there we're entering 2021 and for the sake of the video I'm gonna bunch up the changes in years.
Summary and Future Expectations:
So let's head into 2022. In 2022, we got Neon, which of course, is a lovely agent. Um, I think she's one of those, very similar to Yoru, high, very high fun, high skill ceiling. If you enjoy playing her, you end up getting addicted to playing her. But she's not overwhelmingly played by the majority due to that high skill ceiling and niche pick. But they also released Fade, not too shabby. Fade had a lot of hype. Oh my God, well, I think one of my biggest, the most amount of views in the shortest amount of time was my Fade release, and she was very, very hyped. Now, a lot of people kind of got bored of her, but I digress. As an initiator, she has a ton of fun even today. We also got Pearl.
I think it's a map people very much hated right at the start, and then slowly adjusted to more rapidly than other maps, and Pearl is still in a pretty interesting spot today. I don't mind it. Following that, Riot pulled a fast one on us. I don't know what happened with the naming. We got Harbor, and ever since Harvard, the game kind of fell off quite a lot. Because it's almost the end of this video, as you can tell, that was 2022. It ended in December with Swift Play, which, a round of applause, I love. It's the reason I'm playing more Valorant today because I want to be a little bit more casual, but I want content. And that wraps 2022: Neon, Fade, Pearl, Harbor, Swift Play. And while I can't complain too much, those are five major things to the game. It is a far cry from 2020 and 2021, especially. So here's to a new year and hoping Riot steps it up in 2023.
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