Hero shooter Valorant is getting a little bit bigger with the introduction of its next character. Astra was revealed with a new trailer on February 27, and she looks unlike anything else in the game to date.
In the trailer, we see Astra use some purple space-like fields placed on the ground, and she soon pops up into the air before sucking a few enemies into a gravity device that resembles Zarya’s ultimate ability in Overwatch.
We see a big purple bubble seem to envelop the map at one point, so it’s possible other players will be alerted when Astra is using a particular move. She seems designed to give the other team fits, breaking up formations and making it easier for others to go in for the kill. When players get trapped by her gravity move, for instance, another player fires a few shots at the sitting ducks to take them out.
Adding new characters to a hero shooter certainly makes balancing the game more difficult. This is especially true in something like Valorant, which focuses not just on special abilities, but also precision shooting like you’d find in legacy PC multiplayer games. In addition to the new Escalation mode, the game’s previous patch adjusted several different weapons and changed abilities and attributes on four different agents.
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