Valorant: Reaver Operator

The Reaver Operator was the first weapon skin we developed on Valorant. Before we had even finished all of the base weapons, back in 2018 we took some time to explore what skins would be. Originally it just started out as an idea for a generic "dark fantasy," trying to see if we can fit more extreme thematics into our skins to allow for a broad range of appeal. The telekinesis style animation was a test to see how far we could go outside of the norm while still maintaining competitive integrity.
What we thought would be a failure of a skin in our closed beta (players told us that our skins weren't very impressive!) turned out to be one of the most demanded thematics to date, with players constantly telling us "Bring back Reaver!!" We took some time to simplify some of the geometry and play with the colors of the model and effects to really lean into that edgelord vibe we were going for!