Shortly after being teased by developer Riot Games, the new tropical beach-themed Valorant map, Breeze, has had its full trailer leaked. With the addition of the new colorful map, this will bring the game's roster of maps to six (not including the shooting range).
The free-to-play, tactical first-person-shooter by the League of Legends studio was first released in 2020 to a very positive reception from critics and fans of the genre, quickly growing a dedicated esports scene populated with newcomers and many ex-pro players from similar shooter titles, such as Overwatch. Valorant has been compared to Valve’s incredibly successful 2012 title Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, thanks to its similar map styles and gameplay. This could be partially due to ex-Counter-Strike pro turned map designer, Salvatore Garozzo, who was responsible for the design of the Global Offensive's Cache map, and he's now a game designer for Valorant. The game’s player classes and MOBA-like special abilities have also earned it comparisons to Blizzard Entertainment’s 2016 team shooter, Overwatch.
Hours after the official reveal of Breeze by the official Valorant Twitter page, the full trailer for the map has leaked by the popular Valorant datamine and leak hawk, ValorLeaks. Breeze will be the first new map for Valorant this year, with the last map released being Icebox, an arctic base, in October 2020. While the leak appears to be legitimate, the leaked trailer is in Korean. Accordingly, players wanting English narration will have to wait for Riot’s official release of the trailer, or seek out a translator.
The trailer shows fans a little more information into the new map outside of the official teaser images shown by Riot. Player Agents can be seen running along a tropical beach, then battling in a dilapidated cobblestone fort with ramshackle buildings surrounded by palm trees. The wait to see gameplay outside of the leaked trailer won't be long, as Riot has also announced that current competitors participating in the 2021 Valorant Champions Tour will be given access to test out and stream Breeze gameplay on April 26, with patch 2.08 for the game releasing the day after on April 27.
The new map stands a strong chance to reinvigorate Valorant’s player base, something developers generally count on with major content releases like Breeze. Players that disliked the numerous tight spaces of the previously released Icebox map may be pleased to see that Breeze comes with many open areas which allow for more ranged play. There still isn’t an official release date for the map, but - based off of Icebox’s release date, which came with the game’s Episode 1, Act 3 update - it would be reasonable to expect that Breeze will be included during Episode 2, Act 3’s release.
Valorant is available on PC.
Source: Valorant, ValorLeaks