Latest VALORANT map Sunset launches today
VALORANT players that are excited to check out the game’s new Los Angeles-based map, Sunset, are in luck, as it is launching alongside Episode 7 Act II today.
The map was revealed during the Grand Finals of VALORANT Champions, which was also in Riot Games’ (and latest agent Gekko’s) hometown LA. Sunset is an ode to this city, featuring several local staples including food trucks, art decco and mission-style architecture, graffiti created by local artists, and, of course, traffic.
“We took most of our artistic inspiration from right here in our backyard,” said lead map designer Joe Lansford in a developer Q&A. “You’ll find many staples from our diverse LA culture across the map. Everything from food trucks, traffic jams and art deco architecture to neon sunsets.”
On the mechanical tactical side of things, Sunset is a mid-control VALORANT map that includes three lanes and two sites. The devs at Riot haven’t made a map like this in a while, so they wanted to return to mid-control for Sunset.
“VALORANT has several versions of the three lane map formula, but we haven’t made one with a strong focus on mid control in a long time – Enter Sunset,” said Lansford. “Sunset features a mid that is fairly difficult to control and doesn’t really favor one team or another; it’s generally good for rifle ranges and opens up a bunch of opportunities for whichever team can take it. We expect to see both teams make mid control a central part of their strategy on Sunset.”
Beyond the new map, this update is also bringing changes to half of the game’s roster of Agents, Breeze is coming back into the competitive map rotation, and Fracture and Pearl are out of the competitive map rotation for the time being. Breeze will be a bit different when you play on it now, as the patch has made several physical changes to this map as well. For full details on what patch 7.04 is bringing to VALORANT, check out the patch notes.