Respawn developers unintentionally published files for 14 upcoming characters in the Apex Legends Iron Crown patch. Data miners have been slowly revealing them, and Valk, the Soaring Aviator, is next on the list.
Data miner The Gaming Merchant leaked the legend in a video today and speculated as to how Valk’s abilities might work.
The Gaming Merchant explains that there’s no movement sounds, back story, or character model for Valk in the battle royale’s files. This likely means that fans shouldn’t expect to see the aviator in-game anytime soon.
What the game files do reveal, however, are Valk’s potential abilities, which seem to all be centered around aerial gameplay.
Passive ability: Afterburners
After the initial drop, Valk and her teammates fly faster while skydiving. This passive doesn’t affect Valk’s skydive at the beginning of a match.
So players looking to start the game by landing before their enemies will just have to perfect their skydiving technique.
Tactical ability: VTOL Jets
The description for the ability is simple: Hold to hover. The VTOL Hover was originally a utility ability from Titanfall 2, available for the Northstar Titan class. The ability allowed the user to hover for a short amount of time, similar to Pharah’s Jump Jet ability in Overwatch.
“I’m curious how this will be balanced,” The Gaming Merchant said. “In some way, hovering sounds pretty fun. But it’s probably going to slow your movement down when strafing left and right.”
Ultimate ability: Skyward
You and nearby allies take to the skies after a short countdown. Because there’s a countdown that appears, a squad may be vulnerable while waiting for the ability to launch. And in order for the ability to work, players must have vertical clearance with nothing blocking their upward path.
“This is basically a re-deploy feature that lets you skydive around the map,” the data miner said. “When you’re pushing for high kill games, the most challenging thing is covering ground to get to enemies… with Valk’s ultimate, this is going to change completely.”
Valk is now the ninth unreleased champion to be leaked by data miners, joining Crypto, Revenant, Nomad, Blisk, Skunner, Husaria, Rampart, and Seer. Five more unreleased legends are scheduled to be leaked with Immortal up next, according to The Gaming Merchant.
