"It should be celebrated" - Valorant developers on how Indian myth and literature shaped new Indian Agent, Harbor 

Valorant will soon receive Episode 5 Act 3, with a fascinating new water-bending Agent, Harbor. His appearance, personality, and ability designs have caught massive attention owing to their eye-catchy style.

Harbor's origins have brought together a country of billions to celebrate his arrival in the game. In an erstwhile Twitch stream, the developers revealed how Indian mythology and literature influenced Harbor's fascinating design.

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Valorant developers were awestruck by the mythical backdrops while working on Harbor

Ryan Clements, the Narrative Writer, explained how the team has been looking to incorporate "a spirit of adventure" in Harbor since the creation of his concept. He further elaborated that the team wasn't interested in the western notion but on a more traditional design that would appeal to the Indian audience:

"We weren’t interested in the Western concept of an adventurer and treasure hunter. We wanted something different, we wanted something that felt right for an Agent from India."

Clements explained how Harbor's passion for artifacts came into the picture:

"So, that's why we really wanted to lean into this special operative, military guy, but that has an expert in antiquity. As someone that loves it, studies it, and cares about it, it's part of his background, it's part of his passion. So, there's definitely something more than just the big muscle-y action hero, obviously he is a big muscular force on the battlefield, but we wanted him to be able to come in there and do things that are much more about the academic."

Clements mentioned how Hollywood action heroes are not as multi-faceted as their counterparts in Indian mythologies, which makes the latter the perfect source of inspiration for an Agent in Valorant:

"When you look at Indian myth and Indian literature, their heroes are much more multifaceted than traditional Hollywood action heroes… They have this amazing tradition that we wanted to at least honor and celebrate with Harbor."

Character Producer John Goscicki revealed that the team had India as a place of origin in mind for a long time. However, they found the perfect time to execute the plan with Valorant's Agent 21. He said:

"India has a huge part of the global population, there's tons of history, culture, that should be celebrated and looked at when it comes to how we create Agents and how we represent all of the players around the world."

Goscicki continued on how the Valorant team created Harbor:

"It's a tremendous amount of research. We watch a lot of movies. We read books. We look up as much stuff we can online. We hired an academic consultant to talk to. We met with a lot of Indian writers around the office... We need to learn and know more to respect the culture and the history and the players themselves, so that when they're picking this Agent, they see parts of their culture respresented in them."

Harbor will be launched in Valorant on October 18 through patch 5.08, including a new Battle Pass, Ion 2.0 weapon collection, and more.