“Nothing was really easy, it all was complicated.” – Interview with VALORANT’s Character Producer on Chamber

The upcoming agent Chamber is the number one topic for all the VALORANT fans. To find out more about this character, we talked to John Goscicki, the responsible character producer at Riot Games for the new agent.

Since Chamber’s trailer is already out we’ve seen that Chamber is a lot about precision and the consideration of small details. How do these aspects of the agent translate gameplay- and personalitywise to the players ingame?  

When we started out working on Chamber we were thinking a lot about different ways to encapsulate the pinpoint accuracy fantasy. From early on, we were thinking about sniper players of many types of games and what they tend to enjoy. When we were thinking about that kind of person, there are so many small details, small nuances that you have to take into account.

We thought that, that mindset would overlap and also thread the needle to high-end men’s fashion, where your suit-game is all about the subtleties. Like the nuance on how it fits around your shoulders and the waist, the different textures in colors and the threading that holds it all together.

All of these subtleties had fascinating analogies to someone who is thinking about that pinpoint accuracy and wanting to encapsulate it. That’s kind of where the inception of thinking about the two of those combined came from.

What challenges have you encountered in developing Chamber? 

There is always the problem, where things don’t work out the way you expected them to work. The way our gun system interacts with the ability’s system didn’t work well right away, so we had to do a lot of engineering work. Also, it was hard to find out how his abilities get summoned, what would makes sense. There were a lot of weird things, like a drone flies over his head and drops him a weapon.

The idea of his thematic was all about the subtleties. So there was a lot of looking at very small things and the finest details. Nothing was really easy, it all was complicated. Normally you have  one to two difficult things and some things that are done more standard. With this guy, there were more difficult things, then there were standard things.

In another interview, you once mentioned that with every new agent, you take a new risk. What risk are you taking with Chamber? 

Chamber might be a conservative risk, but still a risk. With Chamber we are trying out something clear. Let’s take the role of the sentinel, someone that’s really about locking down a location and holding it, and flip that role on its head. So, what about a sentinel that locks down a site through getting kills.

The mechanical skill is what leads to locking down that location. The risk here is a very meta one, where our hope is that we see players trying out that new role by trying out chamber. Players that maybe usually don’t play sentinels and then also try out other sentinels. Because the more you move around within the characters, the more of a well-rounded player you are and the more understanding you have of the game. If we see players that normally don’t play sentinels, try them out, then that’s one of the big wins here.

How do you get from a character prototype to the actual agent with suitable and fitting skills? Or is it the other way around? 

A lot of times we have the skills but don’t know the character yet. We do develop them a bit in tandem. Normally what we’ll do is we think about a gameplay space for a character that is not currently in the game, and then we’ll think about the core element of this agent, so you can build the rest of the surrounding gameplay.

We’ll get our concept artists in, writers, game designers and think about the feelings this player should have. How should you feel as a player while hitting buttons. Then we’ll come up with personalities and a thematic that ties up into that feeling, because everything about the character should be reinforcing and doubling down, what it feels like to hit that button. But that’s a very long process!

How do you make sure new Agents retain their own unique flavour as you keep expanding the Agent roster at the current pace? 

Early on in the development of a character, one of the things we are focused on is what we describe as the power source of the character. If you look at Phoenix, it’s the solar fire guy and Jett is the wind girl. It’s a really simplified way of thinking about it, but it helps to manifest the rest of the abilities. This is often the clearest way to keep all the agents feel unique and special. Because that will then be their thematic line with everything that they’re about and their abilities do. So, we will probably not make another wind character.

What are the main challenges in introducing a new Agent to the existing balance of Agents in VALORANT?

I think one of the most difficult things is just how the landscape of the game is changing alongside the development of the character. We started working on this character early this year and since then a lot has changed. Players are using agents in ways they weren’t in January. So probably one of the hardest aspects is taking all of these lessons and cooperating it into the development of the agent. Because sometimes we ask ourselves, should we be doing this anymore?

Thank you, John, for this interesting interview and have a nice day!

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Image Credits: Riot Games

 

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