Valorant

Genre	multiplayer shooter
released:	2020
Developer	Riot Games
Analysis from	Muriel Ackermann, Gianmarco Di Vincenzo, Yevhen Kozlov

1. General Info

Valorant is a competitive multiplayer tactical hero shooter developed by Riot Games.

10 players compete, either as attackers, to plant a spike or defuse the spike as defenders. Each team consists of different characters the players can choose for each game they play. Each one is unique and has their own abilities and powers and personality. But each person has access to the same weapons.

Setting: near future, supernatural powers.

2. Importance of Sound in Valorant

In Valorant, sound is very important. Players get a lot of information through sound and, so especially in a game with so many powers and abilities, it is important for them to have different and distinct sounds. Also, if the spike is being planted or defused are very important sound cues the player needs to hear and also if an enemy is using their ultimate ability.

3. Spike Sounds

Spike Sounds - From Plant To Detonation

The sound of a spike plant gives some notification of beginning. The most noticeable characteristics are that this sound has a lot of reverberations and reversed sounds. This beginning is made in a quite technological style showing how technologically advanced the environment is.

After the beginning, the closer the spike to the activation, the faster it is beeping. So all the process of time to explosion is followed by increasing frequency of beeping and continuous reverberations with increasing and decreasing volume after. The whole sound effect of continuous reverberation has some cumulative effect. It sounds like the start is lighter than the end, and closer to the end of reverberation the sound is getting more heavy.

After some first stage of beeping some reverse sound appears additionally. It sounds like an anomaly, not so heavy, but so strange and unstable that it gives some notice that the situation is worse. If we compare with the heavy reverberation sound of the first beeping stage, we can notice that although the reverberation sound gets heavy sometimes, it fades away after some short accumulation. So the second stage gives some feeling of a more tense situation.

In the last third stage of beeping we can notice another sound of reversal. It gives some very fast pulsation association that the player could understand that it is so close to detonation that he probably will not have enough time to deactivate this bomb.

After this - a quick attenuation with retraction association representing a part of the very noticeable holywood sound of very technological bomb explosion, and - the detonation sound. It’s interesting that this sound actually doesn’t sound like a real detonation so much. It has some activation effect and some cumulative effect which more and more sounds like an explosion, but with a lot of reversal and technological feeling to it.

Valorant Spike Plant Sound Effect

The plant effect is a quite short sound. It gives some a beep-beep sound created probably for more clear notification and also some reverse/synth sound representing the environmental setup of the spike.

The Difference Between Full and Half Defuses (Valorant)

Full Defuse sound has some lower pitch effect, Half Defuse sound has some higher pitch effect. Both of them have some beep-beep sound where the second beep is more high pitched than the first one with some reverse sounds additions.

4. Abilities

The game has a lot of sound effects for abilities.

Abilities are tools that are available to be used by agents in addition to the weapons that they carry. Each ability in VALORANT is unique, though some share similarities. All agents have three types of abilities to give them more tactical opportunities and assist their gunplay; basic, signature, and ultimate.

Basic abilities are abilities that most agents have to purchase using credits to be able to use. All agents have two basic abilities, with the exception of Reyna having only one and Astra having three basic abilities.

Signature abilities are abilities that agents are guaranteed to be able to use every round. All agents have one signature ability that will give them one free charge for them to use, with the exception of Reyna having two abilities, albeit having shared charges between them.

Ultimate abilities are the strongest in the game. To use an ultimate, players must acquire ultimate points. These are earned by killing enemies, dying, capturing ultimate orbs, and completing a spike plant or defuse.

Below you are able to listen to an example, in this case - all abilities sounds of KAY/O All Abilities Sounds - KAY/O

You can notice a certain technological flavor in all these sounds.

The first basic ability of KAY/O is FRAG/ment. The start of this sound provided some reverse launching/setup sound with some attenuation and sharp setup changes. After some moments of silence there is some reverse synth pulsation sound with some “explosion attenuation” effect. It represents 4 ways of explosion which can damage other players. In the end there is some stone sound which sounds like some after-destruction falling of stones.

The second basic ability of KAY/O is FLASH/drive. The first quick part of sound represents taking this grenade in your hands. When you throw this grenade you get some continuous increasing tensity, but light sound of flying in the space. Once the grenade has fallen, you hear the third part of this effect - explosion, but still light and quite technological, sounding similar to the disclosure of a technological device.

The third ability is a signature. As always it is represented by some synth reverse and reverberation sounds. It has the first part of some taking in your hands and extracting/setup sound, after this - the second part where some launching effect could be recognised with increasing tensity, and finally the third part - explosion which collects all these sounds and reverberates them creating an interesting effect.

The fourth last ability is ultimate NULL/cmd. It has two types of sound. Launching sound is accumulating for a while and after this there is an explosion effect distributing around. Pulsating sound appears every certain amount of seconds for 4 times and have some reverse and distributing effects with increasing tensity and some wave effect. The last pulsation feels a bit different representing the latest pulsation in the duration of active ability. It differs making a pulsation a bit more “wide” in the end.

Overall, each ability gives some specific noticeable sound representing abilities of certain characters and what they actually do.

5. Character Voice Over

All Agents Ultimate Voice Lines

Valorant Voice Over sounds are based on each character. Voices of characters can be angry, friendly, non-human, elegant, smart, technological, magical and many more. Each of them is about what they do. In the example above, there are Voice Lines of ultimates of all characters. Sometimes it represents the opinion about their situation and how this ultimate will change the situation, sometimes they just voice what they actually do.

6. Weapon Sounds

All Weapons & Guns Sounds

Each sound represents a different type, characteristics of the weapon. There are sounds of taking in arms, attacking (shooting/cutting by knife), reloading (if possible).

Tactical Knife is only the weapon which doesn’t have reloading (obviously) and has a slice effect when attaking.

Sidearms overall sound lighter than other weapons. There are the muffler pistol (a more dull sound) and the automatic pistol (a more continious sound) which differ from the overall sidearms concept. Some of them can be deeper, but still light.

Shotguns are quite heavy in sound and only weapons which have at least some kind of really recognizable reverberation and echo.

SMGs are similar to sidearms, also quite light, but very fast making shooting sound continuous. Rifles are heavy and continuous, although there is one non-automatic rifle, it still sounds more heavy than sidearms. There is also one muffler rifle which sounds more dull than other rifles, but still more heavy than sidearms.

Sniper Rifles have one similar characteristic - really long echo. It does not necessarily sound heavy, but there is a really heavy one.

Machine guns are heavy, continuous and sound a bit more similar to shotguns. They don’t have so much reverberation, but definitely have some echoes.

7. Death/Killing/ACE

All Female Death Sounds All Male Death Sounds

There are some death sounds which are based on characters. But they all have the same realization - a pain moaning death sound.

Valorant - All Ace Sounds

There are some killing/ACE sounds also. They have 5 different steps. From 1 to 4 each sound is fast appearing and has slow attenuation, with some permanent going higher. Each next one has more increased pitch than the previous one. The last one (5) is finishing with some distinct end effect recognition with some simple music integrated and goes generally lower.

These sounds can be customized if the player bought or got some custom skins from the market of Valorant.

8. Footsteps

Valorant Directional Footstep Sounds

There are some footstep sounds which usually are changed just by a pitch. Depending on which surface a character is walking the sound can be a bit different.

9. Environmental Sounds

Environmental Sounds Environmental Sounds don’t affect gameplay so much, although they definitely give some immersion.

10. Conclusion and General Settings of Sounds

VALORANT Gameplay

The important thing I noticed is that generally the sound of Valorant is not so environmentally reverberated/bass. I don’t feel the volume. It doesn’t give so much real diversity of sound making it quite flat and “plastic”.

A lot of sounds are based on reversed/synth sounds and I know that it represents advanced technologies, but I feel like a lot of abilities, for example, sound quite similar. It feels like cliche in some sense and doesn’t have so much diversity of sound like the real world does. I am just thinking that if it had this diversity and still represented technological advancements, it would be much better.

Proximity is based on a general distance rule to a sound source which gives more understanding of how far the sound source is. Besides it, the sound is stereo, so it’s better to play in headphones as with that you can approximately define where your opponent is by the sounds he/she makes, where the spike is located and so on.

11. Comparison with Counter Strike 2

Even though Counter Strike 2 and Valorant have completely different settings and styles, their gameplay is so similar that it makes sense they share many sound categories. While CS2 aims for a more realistic sound, Valorant incorporates a lot of futuristic and synth sounds.

Both games prioritize providing crucial information to the player through sound, but they differ in their approach. Valorant features numerous voice lines from in-game characters designed to aid team communication, such as characters calling out enemy positions. In contrast, CS2 relies on players using in-game voice chat for communication. Weapon sounds in CS2 feel heavy and impactful, also the reverb changes for every gun, signaling its strength and if it is silenced or not. In Valorant, gun sounds are somewhat hollow and high-pitched and so the weapons sound like they are made from plastic, even though their material is sometimes not easy to identify.

Valorant also uses distinct and noticeable sounds, like its very prominent kill sound that plays g major keys and completes it in a melody when a player kills 5 enemies. With Valorant big number of agents possessing various abilities, each with unique sounds and voices, players must learn to recognize and react to them. Despite the variety, these sounds share a technical, futuristic quality. In CS2 all agents have the same abilities, so you don’t need to differentiate between their voices. Also, the kill confirm sound is not as noticeable as the one in Valorant. Headshot noises are treated very similarly in both games. As they are used as an indicator sound that plays no matter the distance from the enemy.

In general, the reverb in both games sound a bit flat which makes sense, since real life gun reverb is very loud and wouldn’t be pleasant to hear while playing. In Valorant this is more prominent though. Where it feels like the sounds don’t represent the environment and feel very flat and empty.

CS2, as the successor in a long-standing series, benefits from nostalgic and iconic sound effects. From weapons to the iconic voice lines, CS2 sounds just „feels right,“ making it hard not to see it as the original and Valorant as a copy. Ultimately, Counter-Strike’s classic status and sound design makes it feel whole, while Valorants feels a bit empty sometimes.