Phoenix was one of the first Agents released when Valorant launched its closed beta in 2020, along with the likes of Viper, Brimstone, and Sage. Newer players are also able to pick Phoenix immediately as he’s a free-to-play Agent. However, with the ever-changing meta in Valorant, the Duelist had seen lower pick rates as Riot Games added more Agents that pro and casual players deemed more viable in games. Despite that, he’s still a prominent figure in the Valorant lore, and fans still seemed to love his swagger in cinematics.

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Over on Reddit, Valorant fan freshest_orange decided to showcase Phoenix’s fiery personality by creating an updated version of his agent select animation using Source Filmmaker. The 33-second clip showed Phoenix throwing and catching a fireball while fixing his jacket’s collar, with a crown floating on top of his head. When a player locks him, he powers up, giving him his signature flame-like aura, and snaps his fingers to conjure up his flash. Apart from the totally different animation, freshest_orange also revamped Phoenix’s graphics, so he looked more HD.

Many Valorant fans in the comments praised the creation, calling it “amazing” and telling the artist that Riot Games should hire them. There were also players who requested them to make an updated version of Viper and Brimstone’s agent select animations, which they said they were willing to pay the artist to do it for them. Meanwhile, some said they would want to see this type of animation in Valorant 2 if Riot ever decides to release one.

Although freshest_orange called Phoenix’s current agent select animation “outdated,” they clarified that it wasn’t meant to throw shade at Riot Games as they only wanted the Agent to have the same detailed animation as newer ones like Fade and Harbor. Although Riot has not done major changes to the Agents’ looks and most of their animations, it did introduce a brand-new Valorant user interface in Patch 5.08. Plus, longtime Riot gamers would know that the developers would give League of Legends champions makeovers after a period of time, so they might give Agents the same treatment in the future, especially with Valorant coming to other platforms.

Valorant is available on PC.

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