After weeks of speculation and theory, VALORANT and League of Legends fans can sleep soundly. Riot Games confirmed earlier yesterday that the two newest characters released for the two games, Neon and Zeri, are not the same person.
“We saw your fan theories and side-by-side comparisons of the new characters Neon and Zeri,” Riot said in a developer update earlier today. said
Theories surrounding the relationship between Zeri and Neon were hard to ignore, as the similarities in their looks, electric-driven skill sets, and sharing the same voice actor made it easy for fans of both games to draw conclusions. But Riot has made it clear that the two characters are separate entities and that their broadcasts should be treated as separate events in two different games.
Riot also provided information on the development of Neon-Zeri and how both the League and VALORANT development teams worked together to create a pair of characters that could be connected.
VALORANT developer John Goscicki and League developer Ryan Mireles, who led character design teams for their respective games, worked together throughout 2021, citing the launch of Riot's new animated series Arcane as the catalyst for the inspiration behind the creation of Zeri and Neon.
“We have diversity goals in League in terms of role, region, gender and playstyle,” Mireles said. “VALORANT has a lot of these too, but they're very different from what we do in League. So we had to make sure we found an area that was good for both of our games and that was exciting for the players.”
Neon is currently on VALORANT, and Zeri is on League on January 20.