Riot recently released a teaser video during the Summer Game Fest of what could be the 16th agent for VALORANT. Ever since the roster started expanding, players just can’t get enough of these new agents and are now asking for more. Recently, compared to the previous releases of the other agents such as Yoru and Astra, Riot has been keeping the 16th agent heavily under wraps. But that won’t stop the player base’s eagerness to unravel this mystery agent. 

VALORANT teaser during Summer Game Fest hints at potential gameplay of “Grenadier”

VALORANT’s patch 2.09 released on May 11 brought new game modes and a number of nerfs and buffs to maintain balance in-game. However, thanks to data miners, they have discovered a new character name hidden deep within the game’s code. This character was codenamed “Grenadier.” Just from the name, we can imagine a soldier armed with grenades or a grenade launcher, which could be a hint to how this agent's skill kit will be like.

VALORANT‘s Character Producer, John Goscicki, also teased Agent 16’s potential abilities in one of his State of the Agents articles stating, “Our hope is that the @*&#*&!(&H! #$ &*! *%# &@! *U&^A! “@*!!*(@@*&^” (@&* ^@!^& &@! *&# &^C#^ANG W*^@ $O )(E&# *N@! S!T#$

Huh, I’m sorry my keyboard just stopped working there… oh well. The new Agent is coming soon enough, and we’re looking forward to seeing what you think when they finally say hello!” 

Connecting the dots, our assumption is “Grenadier” could potentially have throwable EMPs that can disrupt other VALORANT agents’ abilities temporarily. It'll be exciting to see how these skills can be utilized for more strategic gunplay. 

“Grenadier” Easter Egg Found in Breeze Map

If you’ve played on VALORANT‘s Breeze Map recently, then you’ve most likely encountered a small knife attached to one of the Radianite boxes. The said knife has a static animation that looks kind of glitchy which in our opinion is a form of corruption. Meaning to say, if a file is corrupted on your computer, then you’ll be unable to access or use this certain file. This only proves our assumptions of “Grenadier” having the ability to disable other agents’ abilities could be correct. 

Goscicki mentioned that we can expect a new agent by Patch 3.0. Do you think “Grenadier” could really have the ability to disrupt others? Only time will tell how VALORANT‘s 16th agent will turn out to be. All we can do for now is wait for Episode 3, which is expected to launch on June 22, 2021