The 3.10 update for Valorant is rolling out today, introducing the game's millions of players to the French Sentinel, Chamber. The newest Agent occupies an interesting niche in both the game's meta - Sentinels traditionally don't aim to be top fraggers, while Chamber actively encourages that - and its aesthetic. Whereas a good deal of existing Valorant Agents are clearly inspired by streetwear and techwear, Chamber looks like an assassin who could moonlight as a GQ cover star. In an interview with Valorant character producer John Goscicki, the developer confirmed that's very much intentional.
According to Goscicki, Chamber is meant to play on the "well-dressed assassin" archetype, noting that the "unique fan response" to the character's reveal was precisely why getting his design right was so important. In a game like Valorant, new players gravitate towards flashy Agents, whether it's their abilities in gameplay demonstrations or their sense of style. In the case of the latter, Chamber appeals to a new demographic of player, and helps broaden the game's visual tones while still fitting in among the other fashionable killers that flesh out Valorant's roster.
As the game's first Agent from - Valorant has helped further deepen ties to specific Agents by having them represent their countries and their respective cultures - Chamber's design had a lot of flexibility. According to Goscicki, though, the team was pretty confident in the direction of its French Agent from the first meeting. "We knew we wanted someone from , and in the same meeting - maybe not down to every last detail - we were discussing that kind of high-end fashion assassin archetype." Those details got a lot of attention and went through plenty of iterations, however, as Chamber's design spanned roughly 11 months and featured 18 different people working on the Agent.
With that many people involved, it's easy to imagine a scenario where there are too many details shifting around at speeds impossible to track for the developers working on a new Agent. That isn't the case, however, and Goscicki notes that the process has actually gotten easier over time. "Chamber's design isn't as many question marks [as previous Agents]," Goscicki says in response to an inquiry about the difficulty involved in creating a new character in a game that's so important to balance correctly. "Some of his abilities are things we've done before...and it's more a matter of making them feel different."
For those unfamiliar, Chamber's abilities combine the stalling capabilities traditionally found in the Sentinel role with utility that wouldn't be out of place on a Duelist character. The French Agent features a teleport and slowing trap in his kit, both of which have been features of other Agents prior - Omen and Yoru for the former, and most notably Sage for the latter. His other abilities, which allow him to equip what are essentially tweaked, more powerful versions of a Sherrif and an Operator, give him more offensive-oriented play than other Sentinels, especially in regards to his ultimate. While Sage can resurrect allies to help swing battles and Killjoy can force enemies off a site with her lockdown, Chamber's ultimate, while still able to keep people away, can also score frags while doing so.
At its core, Chamber's design comes down to offering something unique to the Sentinel role. "Chamber's design comes from the idea of a Sentinel that can hold down an entire site by fragging," Goscicki says, and it's a central principle of his kit. "The Operator ultimate is something that appeals to the type of player who wants to feel like an aim god," while his quick-equip pistol "is to help with scenarios where players have closed the gap on [Chamber]." That being said, the team still envisions both these abilities as ones that will primarily function as additional tools to hold a location for the team, though Goscicki its that by the time players have spent a day with a character, their collective experience with them has already logged more hours than a development team is capable of across months. "Players across all skill levels who are good at head tapping will want to experiment," he says, and that means it's impossible to predict exactly how people will use Chamber.
That doesn't mean there hasn't been an intense amount of preparation prior to his launch, however. Some of Chamber's abilities went through dozens of iterations prior to his release. "Just the pistol alone, probably one or two new iterations every week for the entirety of his development." Goscicki noted that, specifically for the pistol, it was important to get the balance right of something that's fun to add to the game's repertoire but also avoids feeling like something any Agent could buy in-between rounds. The team knew it had something good when they were experimenting with the ADS function of the pistol, and that after experimenting with that function, Goscicki felt that "going back from using Chamber's pistol to a regular one, there's sometimes this feeling of, 'wait - where's my buttons?'" Having that sensation is key to having an Agent's identity feel unique to them.
Even after that preparation, however, there are a multitude of balancing issues to consider. In a game like Valorant, where audio and visual cues are very much part of its core identity, that can mean delaying an Agent just because something feels off about how they're presented. Chamber's two week delay is a result of that careful consideration of all elements of gameplay. "That split-second decision making based on these elements needs to be just right," Goscicki says, nothing that getting the look and feel of abilities to a state where they feel like a natural integration into Valorant is "huge."
No matter how the team envisions a character, however, the nature of the tactical shooter - and especially one with so many abilities - is that players will inevitably take developers into places they weren't necessarily expecting after launch. In Goscicki's eyes, that's a feature, not a bug: "Chamber's kit as a Sentinel could be a way to get people who traditionally have no interest in Agents in that role to give the playstyle a try." It's also another selling point of Valorant, which views its role designations more as suggestions rather than hard-defined design restrictions that can only exist in certain forms. "From the beginning, roles were more of guidelines for expectations. We design kits with a style or role in mind," he says, but notes that it's exciting when players mess with those styles or discover their own twists on a character.
There's also a growing veteran feel to the way the team's confidence in Agents results in their design choices. "We're not going into character designs like, 'we have no idea if this will work the way that we want.' With Chamber, we're more confident than ever in our planning and design from the ground up."
So what does success for a character release look like now that Valorant is a little older, and its playerbase has a better idea of what it wants from Riot's steady stream of updates? "If people are using Chamber to hold a site, and his utility makes that experience interesting for both sides," that's a win for Goscicki and the team. That's not the only scenario that would make the team proud, however. If there's a "curveball scenario, and he's really good but still healthy for Valorant in an unexpected way, that works, too."
Nearly a year after the first versions of Chamber were discussed, the Agent is finally being added to Valorant. It's obvious talking to Goscicki that an incredible amount of fine-tuning and iterative design has gone into him - and in just days after release, all of that could be turned on its head by a playerbase that's creativity and ion for the game has consistently created surprises for the team working on it. In a way, that's the beauty of Valorant, and the question marks surrounding Chamber's spin on Sentinel play are exactly the types of queries Valorant's many would-be aim gods have enjoyed answering since it released.