How the New Sunset Map Brings ‘Golden Hour’ to VALORANT

ign.com:

VALORANT, Riot’s popular first-person tactical shooter, is all about quick reflexes, teamwork, and hard fought duels across a wide selection of maps. During the VALORANT Champions Tour Grand Finals, or VCT for short, Riot took time to unveil its tenth standard map, Sunset, which is heavily inspired by Riot’s hometown of Los Angeles. Sunset joins the map pool roughly five months after the release of VALORANT’s 21st agent (well, 22 if you’re big into the lore,) and native Angeleno, Gekko (You can check out his abilities in our VALORANT guide).

Sunset is as gorgeous as its namesake, featuring a neon sunset glow that highlights the cultural staples of LA scattered throughout the map. The map includes both Art Deco and Mission-style architecture, and even graffiti that Riot sourced from a few local LA artists. There are also unending traffic jams that plague LA and food trucks, which are one of my favorite staples when I visit. There are also a few areas like the clock tower and parking lot affected by Radianite, though why they have a different look compared to the Radianite affected areas on other maps is being kept under wraps for now. \

The gorgeous neon sunset glow apparently wasn’t as simple as changing the color palette of the skybox. When asked about any unexpected challenges in designing the map Joe Lansford, the Lead Map Designer, explained “Getting the lighting right took a lot of fine tuning and collaboration between art and design. We wanted to hit the mood of an LA sunset with a pink skyline and long shadows, but those aren’t great for gameplay. After a lot of back and forth, we think we found that sweet spot that captures both the tone and clarity we want.” But how does it play? IGN got to fly around Sunset in