Will ‘Defuse’ be Valorant’s only game mode at launch?

Social media is abuzz with talk about Riot Game’s newly announced FPS Valorant and despite a short gameplay reveal there are still questions about what modes will be included at launch.

Valorant is set to come out sometime in Summer 2020 according to Riot, but so far interested players only have a short YouTube video of gameplay to go off of.

At the moment just one game mode has been shown off, one we’ll refer to as ‘defuse’ since it involves players defusing a bomb similar to CSGO, but there’s a good chance that won’t be the only one.

In Valorant’s official reveal on March 2, Riot said the game’s characters would “bring a unique set of tactical abilities they can use to gather information, fortify locations, scout for enemy intel, breach defensive sites, control territory, and more.”

• Read More: Riot Games respond to rumors of Valorant Beta starting soon

Most of these abilities sound like they would fit right in with a ‘defuse’ mode, but they could also be put to use for other objectives.

Overwatch and CSGO, two games Valorant has been compared to, both have more than just one game mode, so it’s likely Valorant will as well.

Since we have gameplay footage for the so-called ‘defuse’ mode, it makes sense that one of the maps revealed so far for Valorant seems specifically designed for that, according to Counter-Strike veteran izakOOO.

The other map the CSGO player mentioned (Bind) had two teleporters, which he said were designed to facilitate one-way transportation between reactor sites.

• Read More: Riot cancels Valorant gameplay event due to coronavirus

Again, both of these maps seem made for the ‘defuse’ mode and Riot probably isn’t going to show off a map for a game mode they don’t want to be revealed yet – but if developers have two fully-made maps for this mode, they’ve probably put in enough time for maps for different game modes as well.

Exactly what types of different game modes we could see in Valorant depend on which direction developers want to take the game.

We could see King of the Hill and Escort maps similar to Overwatch, or modes like Search & Destroy or Domination akin to Call of Duty, but only time will tell.

For now, we do know that a ‘Defuse’ mode is coming though, so if you want to get a leg-up on other competitors in preparation for the Valorant beta coming soon, you could drop into a few games of CSGO and get used to the bomb-based mode.