With the staging of Valorant VCT Lock In, the biggest competition in the history of esports FPS games, players have grabbed the Mercy Knife Pack, which includes an awesome new melee weapon with inspired color variants of the three new international regions. As the excitement builds, we caught up with Riot to talk about creating the VCT Lock In mod.
For those who haven’t seen it yet, the Misericordia knife is a crystalline masterpiece. Its body is an ebony tactical knife, but its blade is encrusted with gleaming geodes that you can customize to show your regional pride. North America is decked out in green, the Pacific is blue, and EMEA is a particularly beautiful purple, without me being biased.
Featuring a red variation that represents Valorant esports as a whole, the knife will glow if you manage to break it, mirroring the champion aura we’ve seen in previous VCT Champions skins. Overall, the package is spectacular; looks amazing and is an innovative way to show your regional pride until those rumored Valorant VCT skins surface.
After the reveal, I spoke with Associate Art Director Sean Marino and Senior Cosmetics Producer Preeti Khanolkar about the thought process that went into designing these skins, especially since there are essentially four of them.
“Thinking about how best to support the first event of our new
ecosystem of esports partners, we wanted to give gamers a way to represent their
fandom through their variant choice,” Khanolkar tells me. “We were very excited about this new level of competition and wanted to commemorate this truly special moment that will never happen again with an incredible collection.”
“It was our first time doing a pack with just a knife as the only weapon, but we thought the sleek design and animations, fancy VCT accents, and regional colors would make this extra special, plus the benefit of the revenue.share with partner esports teams.
For me, it’s the colors that make the collection so striking. So why did Riot choose these specific colors and operators to represent each region? “While each league is based in a specific city, we wanted to be more
inclusive and consider all regions that make up a league when choosing an agent,” Marino told PCGamesN.
“We looked for agents that would resonate strongly (or represent the region) within each of our territorial leagues and specifically agents that players would be proud to represent. We chose Viper/Green for VCT Americas, Yoru/Blue for VCT Pacific (this one is a bit of a stretch since Yoru is not a meta in esports) and Astra/Purple for VCT. We chose the color scheme based on the main agent assigned to each territory’s league (Astra, Yoru and Viper).”
However, what’s even more interesting is that the color of each aura is more representative of what we can actually expect from regional colors in the future. “The specific aura color we’ve chosen is closest to the colors that will represent each of our leagues in the future,” Marino tells us, and boy am I obsessed with that toxic green color.
Looking ahead though, as Valorant esports skins with specific partners are in high demand, will this be the last line of shiny crystal cosmetics?
“We’re always looking to push the boundaries of how we represent esports in our game, so I can’t confirm or deny if you’ll ever see the Crystalline theme again,” Marino tells me. “And even if you do, you won’t feel exactly the same in a non-athletic skin.”
I have a bad habit of literally buying any Valorant Crystal Skins – I have the Sentinels of Light Vandal, the Champions 2022 pack, and of course now I have the purple Mercy knife. As the game continues to evolve, I can’t wait to see how its esports aspects play out as well. After all, imagine a black and orange Fnatic hooligan encrusted with sparkling amber. No pressure, Sean and Preeti – OK, maybe a little pressure.
As I contemplate in vague angst how much I’ve spent on Valorant, I’d recommend checking out our roundup of all the best Valorant crosshairs and codes the pros will use in VCT Lock In; After all, having fun skins is only part of breaking through the Valorant ranks; you also need to know how to pop heads.