Valorant announces its newest initiator, Tejo – the well-dressed man of action – has officially joined the Agent roster. Hailing from Colombia, Tejo will undoubtedly shake up the gameplay with his unique kit that flushes out enemies using a top-down approach. Tejo requires you to analyze the situation mid-round and use abilities to help clear the way for your team strategically. Based on the enemy’s playstyle, where are they likely to be? Can you use their location to your advantage and get them in a vulnerable position?
“We had a gameplay opportunity where we wanted to have an Initiator who thought of the map a little differently – more top-down instead of taking angles one by one. We wanted to try adding a couple of abilities with outputs like flushing that was really exciting for creating these windows of power,” noted Ryan “Rycou” Cousart, game designer for Tejo.
Initiators need to do things precisely. We’ve all been there – looking up Agent guides on YouTube, heading to a custom to test out a lineup, ghosting through the walls to see if it landed correctly. Tejo offers Initiator players something different by being able to accurately place utilities using the map in more precisely targeted areas, instead of relying on the perfect-pixel lineups that some utilities with bigger footprints may rely on. This allows you to be more precise with what you want to do but with the trade-off of having a smaller area of impact.
To effectively use his precise utility, Tejo needs some info — and like other Initiators, he’s good at gathering that info himself. “Since Tejo can provide information about where the enemies are, it allows him to be a lot more consistent with the value he can bring,” stated John Goscicki, Agent team lead. “Tejo is one of the few Initiators without a flash so he’ll be more effective with another Initiator like Breach or KAY/O where you can create these really fast, explosive takes.”
The idea of this Agent being an Initiator who leads a team with strong game sense goes along with the perception of someone who is experienced on the battlefield and in life.
“The phrase we used a lot was just ‘man of action.’ We’ve all seen the movies, read the books where you just see the dude in the button-up, in the blazer, just coming and destroying everyone,” noted Goscicki. “He’s the rugged professional – his shirt is unbuttoned and he’s ready for action. He’s not like Chamber where every detail about his attire matters to reinforce the idea of landing the perfect shot. Tejo is going to run in there through all the explosions and everything’s got to be loose, wavy, and comfortable.”
Everyone can play Tejo but those with strategic game sense can make him really shine. Step up to the challenge and learn to use him to your advantage before everyone else. If the new Agent isn’t enough excitement already, check out the new PlayStation Plus offerings which include various in-game items, such as Snowball Gun Buddy, Celestial Player Card, Sentinels of Light Spray, Sovereign Spray, and Radianite Points.
As Tejo would say, “We can stand around all day talking about killing them… or we just do it.” Valorant is free-to-play on PS5 now.
