Two Agents from a parallel reality, Astra and Harbor, traverse the thick jungles of the Western Ghats on a mission to uncover the secrets of a lost city.

During downtime at VALORANT HQ, Sage and Omen face their inner demons. Sage, a level-headed Agent from China, hits the shooting range in anger and frustration. Omen, forever cloaked in mystery, internalizes his pain, focusing his energy on menial tasks. But both discover that their deep scars build deeper bonds.

On a covert mission in her hometown of Istanbul, Türkiye, Fade weaves through a nightclub crowd, effortlessly dodging pursuers in a game of cat and mouse.

In her hometown of Seoul, Jett shares a brief moment of respite with Agents Killjoy and Raze, savoring the food and sharing laughs.

And such is fate that, despite being all around the world, their paths cross—though not exactly in the way they had intended.

VALORANT launched in 2020 as a challenger brand into a sea of first-person shooter (FPS) games, a genre dominated by realistic warfare simulation. In contrast, VALORANT embodies the belief that an FPS can be something more—a game that reflects the modern culture and tastes of Gen Z by letting players express their style, passions, and diversity.

By 2022, all signs pointed to the strategy paying off: VALORANT was regularly on top of Twitch viewership, UGC made by players had racked up billions of views on TikTok, and it hit peak after peak in daily player counts, with nearly 70% of the audience coming from Gen Z.

Then in Q4 2022, two major competitor titles launched—Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and Overwatch 2. Combined, these two competitors had hundreds of millions of marketing dollars, and for the first time since launch, VALORANT saw growth slow down.

The animation style is a mix of 2D and 3D animation with a highly stylized, cinematic approach. The characters are rendered with a high level of detail, using hand-painted textures, while dramatic lighting and camera angles add to the impact of the visuals. The animation is fluid and dynamic, shifting focus between intimate character moments, fast-paced action, and intense combat scenes.

It was a challenge to tell an interconnected story, with many narratives intertwining, in a short amount of time. We used seamless transitions between cuts to connect the scenes together and a montage-style editing approach to set up a conflict between Agents from parallel realities. We wanted the film to be emotional, so we focused on facial expressions and relatable character interactions to build audience empathy and connection.

Overall, the combinations of these techniques helped capture the game’s intense gameplay, while also providing a captivating cinematic and emotional experience.

A core brand value of VALORANT is to be unapologetically global. When the game has major moments, their entire global playerbase should feel represented, so there is no one country that to focus on. This truth is lived through the product itself, with every Agent coming from a different part of the world.

To ensure that REVELATION was an unapologetically global moment, we not only showed a variety of global locations, but combined various global perspectives through the selection of Agents in the asset and the relatable experiences that they were taking part in. We also premiered the cinematic at the same time around the globe, letting players from across regions interact over a single point of fandom. This was an important statement of unity as we looked to re-energize the core player, bringing back any lapsed players, and set the tone for a strong year, together.