Riot Games has revealed a new map for Valorant called Abyss and it looks like one of the most beautiful maps yet, however, there is one big thing to watch out for; you can fall to your death if you aren’t careful.
Revealed at the Valorant Masters Shanghai tournament, Abyss is the first map that features no external boundaries, meaning you can make it outside the traditional playing space with some ability usage. However, those areas are massive drops into the abyss so if you mess things up you’ll be sent to an early grave.
It’s a concept similar to the Vertigo map in Counter-Strike, where if you jump off the side of the map you can create some new paths the enemies might not expect, but if you don’t get back onto solid ground quickly you’ll fall to your death. With Valorant’s abilities thrown into the mix, you can see how this can create some incredible possibilities.
“For Abyss, we wanted to push players to think differently about how utility and movement can be used in exciting new ways,” said Joey Simas, lead map designer on Valorant. “We designed towards this goal by removing the boundaries of the map and letting player creativity shine through. Whether it’s Raze satchelling an enemy off of the map, Omen Shadow Stepping around structures or any agent making use of the more high risk paths around the sites. Abyss also focuses on longer range gunfights while maintaining a straightforward and easy to learn layout. A smaller design goal for Abyss was also exploring ways to fight over and around smokes instead of them feeling like they can completely block out a choke point.”
Abyss will have a fairly traditional two spike sites and three lane design, but there are branching mid paths and, of course, the creative jump paths that can take you outside the map if your agent is capable. There is currently no sign of legendary TNA pro wrestler Abyss making a cameo on the map, but if anyone from Riot reads this, there’s still time to make that happen.
Abyss will launch on June 11, and will also be coming to the recently announced console versions of Valorant, which will retain content parity with the PC version.
Unfortunately, there is still no sign of the rumoured mobile version of Valorant, which some expected to see at the Valorant Masters Shanghai tournament this weekend, given the game was approved for launch in China earlier in the week. However, a surprise launch of the console version next week seems like a pretty good compensation, especially given we get this awesome looking new map.
