Valorant scrapped Agent-exclusive melee weapons similar to Apex Legends heirlooms

Valorant developers have revealed that they originally had plans to introduce unique melee weapons for each agent, much like heirlooms in Apex Legends, but scrapped the idea.

As a free game, the cosmetic items in Valorant are the primary money-maker for Riot’s FPS, and they’re also incredibly popular with players. Valorant’s weapon skins may be pricey, but players are often willing to pay the cost to have some of the fascinating designs in-game.

The most sought-after cosmetic items though, are definitely the melee items, for obvious reasons. You can have these on show in every round of play, and Riot now has countless items to stab and slash opponents with, from knives to axes to full-size blades.

These melee weapons are usable with any Agent, unlike heirlooms in Apex Legends, which are tied to specific Legends and their lore. Riot revealed they had a similar plan too, in a Q&A session.

Valorant’s scrapped Agent melee weapons

Speaking to press, Valorant’s associate art director, Sean Marino, explained that Raze was due to get a brass-knuckles melee, that was also capable of breaking doors. The devs then went on to detail the various other Agent-exclusive melees they had conjured up.

Perhaps the most exciting sounding was Omen’s dual-wield scythes, which sound incredible. Yoru was to be equipped with a butterfly knife, while Sage got a machete, although not exactly sure how this would have fitted into her character.

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Jett was to get a tactical knife, and shock-stick for Sova which obviously fits perfectly. Killjoy was actually going to get a robotic circular-saw, because her character was originally a robot of sorts.

Sadly, we’ll probably never see these ideas come to life. The devs scrapped the idea sometime between Episode 2 and 3.

There was no real explanation given for why the plans never went through, but we can presume that it was preferred not to have certain items locked to certain agents.

In Apex Legends, players have to get very lucky with Apex Packs, or complete a collection event of 24 cosmetics, in order to unlock an heirloom. Valorant of course doesn’t feature a pack system like this at all.

While we might not ever get Agent-exclusive melees in Valorant, we hope some of these melee ideas still make it to the game, available for all Agents.