KAY/O's reveal trailer

KAY/O was officially revealed on 17th of June, 2021, on VALORANT's official YouTube channel. The video has the description: "Seek all radiants. Suppress their powers." In the background, the song "KAY/O" plays, composed by 2WEI and Ali Christenhusz.

## Synopsis

This trailer serves as an official introduction for KAY/O, showing gameplay mixed in with several animated lore segments.

Several of these animated segments show instances from the Radiant War, a mysterious event from KAY/O's timeline in which humans and radiants went to war with each other..

## Plot

### The Simulations

The cinematic starts off in a dark lab, with KAY/O's body lying disassembled. His torso is the centerpiece of the room, suspended by a crane-like contraption, with lose wires emerging form it and spreading throughout the room. The head and all the limbs (save for his left arm) are detached. The entire contraption is inactive.

Steadily, the body hums to life. Power flickers through his form, and the deactivated radianite cores begin to glow with light. The camera pans downwards, revealing one of the unattached parts of the machine: KAY/O's head, lying on a table nearby. Just like the body, energy now flows through this as well.

KAY/O's 'face' turns on. The screen displays a model of a map, specifically of A Ropes in Breeze. We hear a voiceover from Brimstone, stating: "Get a move on, Agent. World doesn't have all day."

The Camera switches to a first-person view of KAY/O, spawned into Breeze with a *Vandal*. In front of him is Brimstone, already on the ropes, moving up towards A Hall. KAY/O inquisitively inspects his gun, then follows Brimstone's lead. What follows is a sequence of engagements with multiple Agents, who are guarding the area.

First up is Yoru. Using the cover of a *Blindside*, Yoru teleports behind KAY/O, and shoots him in the back with his *Shorty*. KAY/O instantly collapses. While this would normally just mean a lost round in an real game, something strange happens this time: the camera now is switches back to the lab, facing KAY/O's head. On the screen, we see the events that just occurred being rewound - KAY/O being shot down, his charging into A Hall, and his climbing up the ropes.

As the display on the face stops rewinding, we return to the gameplay - only now we're back to the point before KAY/O climbed up. Everything continues the same way, until KAY/O rushes into the hall - this time, he looks around, just in time to see Yoru emerging from his *Gatecrash*. He has learnt from the past failure.

Getting an easy kill, KAY/O now pushes forward. One of Cypher's *Trapwires* is blocking the path. Just as he pulls his gun down to shoot the wire, Cypher himself swings out - KAY/O, vulnerable, cannot survive the stream of bullets.

Once again, KAY/O's death spurs some rewinding - going back to when they were climbing up the ropes. He kills Yoru, just as he did earlier, then pushed forward - this time mindful of jumping over the *Trapwire* in his path.

This cycle of 'failure - rewind - replay' continues, with KAY/O repeating battles over and over again, until he finally finds a winning strategy.

Another *Trapwire*, this time paired with a *Cyber Cage*? Use a *ZERO/POINT* to suppress Cypher entirely.

Sage swinging after throwing a *Slow orb*? Use a *FRAG/MENT* to flush her out.

Phoenix, ulted, rushing in after a *Curveball*? Jump behind a nearby cubby, then peak to secure the easy kill.

    Like this, KAY/O steadily pushes forwards, until he finally makes it to the metal doors. Brimstone comes behind him, positioning himself at the switch. While he activates his bracer in preparation for the upcoming battle, KAY/O himself slams his fists together and launches *NULL/CMD*.

The doors steadily rise up, and the duo is ready to retake the site. Brimstone lays down covering smokes, while KAY/O himself goes in first and gets 4 kills - in order, Killjoy, Astra, Sova and Jett.

However, Omen uses *From the Shadows* to teleport behind him with an *Operator*, and downs the bot before he can do any more damage.

### The Radiant War

KAY/O's HUD shows its standard animation when in his downed state - the flashing alarm signs, the timer placed at the sides, the various spinning dials and flashing bars, and so on. However, when around 13 seconds are left on the countdown, strange glitches begin to emerge on the screen.

They begin as broken red text, reading alarming messages such as 'WARNING' and 'DANGER', but rapidly escalate to bursts of static and snippets of images that cover the screen. The timer breaks down as well, moving back and forth seemingly at random.

After this continues for some time (about 5 seconds in total), the glitches take over entirely. The various snippets they form merge together, and form a desolate image.

KAY/O stands alone, *Odin* in hand, in a ruined world - The sky is filled with smoke and soot, and the entire land is engulfed in a deep, ominous red mist. In the background looms a large, dark building, but it is fuzzy and obscured by the fog.

KAY/O's body is active and humming with energy. In contrast to the dark skies, his energy core and face glow unusually bright. The various scars and scratches along KAY/O's body seem fresher, newer. His focus is on a point beyond what is shown my the camera. His hand clutches at the trigger, and he fires a salvo of bullets ahead.

The hellish scene finishes when he stops firing, and charges ahead. The last shot focuses on his foot at it crashes into the soil. The land is scarred and brown, with large amounts of wreckage and debris in the background. As KAY/O's foot lands and throws up a cloud of dirt, small explosions take place to the right, rocking the screen. Heedless, KAY/O continues forward.

The video switches to a bird's eye view from a satellite. Everything is in greyscale, and a small crosshair is present at the center of the screen. The video zooms in, to a wide avenue in a city, with numerous tall towers visible among residential structures.

Suddenly, an explosion goes off right in the middle, unleashing a wave of soot-like particles.

The camera switches to a ground view, and we see another instance of the desolate landscape as before. This time, the primary focus is the ruined city. The damage caused to the surrounding environment is much more visible here, with dilapidated and collapsed buildings going on into the distant fog.

    The ground is littered with debris, with loose chunks of concrete and rebar scattered everywhere. The focal point of the image is a ruined Kingdom logo, crashed onto the ground, lying in the dust.

The particles of soot and smoke are still present. The damage here is clearly more recent, as smoldering fires can still be seen in some places. The entire landscape is a symbol of destruction.

The video is cut again, this time switching to a series of news headlines. They are a series of holographic messages, with new ones being overlaid on top of the pre-existing messages when introduced. In the background, a modified air-raid siren plays (the sound seems to have been highly sped up and slightly deepened). The headlines read (in order):

The First Headline (Note the Turkish text)The Second HeadlineThe Last Headline
The final scene of this segment starts off focused on a *FRAG/MENT* thrown by KAY/O. It flies through the air, hurtling past everything else. As it continues to travel, the *FRAG/MENT* grows increasingly less stable, pulses twice, and then finally explodes. The screen goes blank.

We see perhaps the single most charged frame of the mini-cinematic: KAY/O and Reyna both face off, standing on a fractured plain. The camera is behind KAY/O's back, while Reyna stands ahead, holding a *Vandal*.

The music, which has mostly remained loud and intense for the whole trailer, suddenly goes quiet - almost as if the video itself is holding its breath. Reyna's characteristic laugh pierces through the air, cutting through the silence.

The audio steadily rises in intensity, becoming almost painfully strong as KAY/O clenches his fists. He starts to shake in rage (which technically shouldn't happen, since he's a robot) and the camera focuses on Reyna's eyes - but instead of continuing, the screen glitches, and we find ourselves back at the lab where KAY/O's dissected body is stored.

His screen now shows a bright red 'DANGER' sign, coupled with a *Radianite Hazard* symbol. The sign flashes a twice, and we switch from animation back to the gameplay.

### Final Gameplay

Having finished KAY/O 'flashback' to the Radiant War, the video now takes a second to better showcase KAY/O's various abilities in gameplay. It shows KAY/O in various in-game matches, taking on several enemies alone.

The clips are spread across multiple maps (in order: Breeze, Haven, Split, and Bind; Haven, Split and Breeze feature multiple times). Interestingly, the enemy team in these fights is always composed entirely of Radiants.

The final shot is fittingly in Breeze, back where the trailer started. Brimstone and KAY/O try to take back B Site from the enemy team. Between KAY/O's consecutive kills, we switch back to KAY/O's 'face' in the lab, which now shows some text. In order, the display reads 'TIME/TO/KILL/SOME/RADIANTS'.

Ironically, KAY/O is downed right after the last word ('Radiants') has been shown. Even more ironic is that he lost to Reyna herself. Brimstone is able to finish her off, and then rushes to try and defuse the planted Spike. Sadly, there just isn't enough time - the Spike detonates successfully, killing Brimstone and KAY/O, and the screen cuts to the VALORANT Logo.

The final post-logo scene returns to the lab, once again with a direct view of KAY/O's head. It now rewinds back through all of the events that took place in the trailer - everything, right up till the first few shots of him trying to push up A Hall. As it reaches the end, the screen glitches out, cuts to black, and the trailer ends with the Episode 3 banner.

## Lore

### KAY/O and Brimstone

One of the focal points of KAY/O's character is his relationship with Brimstone, which is well-represented here. In the gameplay, whenever KAY/O is not fighting alone, the only ally he has is always Brimstone.

Not that Brim's presence means much in combat - he stays seriously unhelpful throughout the cinematic. In all the clips where he is present, he only gets a single kill (that being Reyna, right at the end of the cinematic). He doesn't help KAY/O when he is trying to push up A Hall, nor while he is downed by Omen.

He places a grand total of three smokes, and wastes his ult (realistically, this is all simply to let KAY/O stand in the spotlight and showcase his abilities for the trailer)

Interestingly, the bloodied scrap of Brimstone's shirt is present on KAY/O's arm for most of the cinematic - even the parts in which he is with Brimstone himself. This includes the starting simulations and the final gameplay segment. This holds true for the Radiant War segment as well, save one scene - the first one, with KAY/O standing alone, firing his *Odin*. It is the only scene, in the whole trailer, in which KAY/O doesn't have the scrap tied to his arm.

KAY/O, with the bloodied cloth on his arm, about to enter A Site on BreezeKAY/O, with the bloodied cloth not on his arm, in the Radiant WarKAY/O, with the bloodied cloth on his arm, standing before ReynaKAY/O, with the bloodied cloth on his arm, in the final segmentThere are many potential reasons for this: perhaps that scene took place before Brimstone was killed, for example. Perhaps Brimstone had died at the time of that scene, but KAY/O hadn't had a chance to properly grieve for his death yet. Regardless, the cloth is back on by the next scene, where he stands alone against Reyna. If nothing else, this does at least give something of a timeline for the order in which the events all occurred in the cinematic.

### The Lab

Throughout the cinematic, we keep returning to this mysterious 'Lab' where KAY/O's body is placed. The starting few seconds of the cinematic are perhaps where we get the most information about it.

There is currently no one attending the room, and a monitor of sorts is present in the back. Sadly, the distance makes anything it shows unrecognizable.

It is unknown what the purpose of this lab is. Was it specially built to house KAY/O's body? Or is it just a room that was hastily repurposed to fit him? The structure holding up his body, which seems to be specially designed for the job and directly attached to the room itself, seems to suggest the prior. If that is the case, the entity who had the Lab built clearly had a considerable budget to do so.

    The design of the walls and the lighting is strangely reminiscent of the VPHQ, as seen in the *WARM UP* cinematic - the black walls, the designs on said walls, the glass, all are very similar. This could imply that the lab is situated somewhere in the VPHQ complex, however it remains unconfirmed.

KAY/O's state of disassembly is worth noting. While it is likely that what we are shown is KAY/O having being broken down into his individual parts for some reason, it is also possible that the lab shows KAY/O during his assembly (which would mean that it is set during the Radiant War). As we don't know when the various scenes of the trailer too place, this theory cannot be confirmed nor denied.

### The Gameplay

The gameplay is the main focus of the cinematic, showing off KAY/O's strengths and weaknesses as an Agent. Looking at it superficially, one may assume that the gameplay is a canon representation of some events, but there are several small discrepancies and inconsistencies that suggest otherwise.

For one, in every single gameplay scene we see KAY/O's 'standard' 3D model, complete with the torn scrap of Brimstone's shirt on his arm. Now, we know that he took the cloth in memory of Brimstone after he died in the Radiant War - as such, this gives us a basic timeline of when the gameplay takes place: it is all after Brimstone died, and likely even after the Radiant War itself was finished.

If that is the case, it is thus impossible for any of the events in the gameplay segments to canonically take place during or before the RW, especially not if he has Brimstone fighting by his side.

This would, then, make us believe that all the gameplay scenes are taken in some other battles, after KAY/O traveled to 'current' time, helping the Protocol in various missions against Ω-Earth. However, that is also not the case: for barely a second (at 1:15 in the trailer) after Brimstone opens the metal doors into A Site, we get a glimpse at the Breeze teleportal, which reads 'Sequence Initiated'. While it is true that the teleportal did at one point show the 'Sequence Initiated' message, this message was changed to 'Portal Breached' once KAY/O came through (see KAY/O's Teasers for more information).

* 'Sequence Initiated' visible on the Screen
* A closer look at the words
1/2As the screen below the portal still reads 'Sequence Initiated', we can conclude that canonically KAY/O has not yet arrived through the portal (by extension meaning that he has not yet joined the Protocol, and thus cannot yet be sent on missions to retake sites with Brim).

As such, we have a situation where this could not take place *before* the Radiant War, and it cannot take place *after* the Radiant War - if this gameplay was canon, it would lead to a paradoxical impossibility.

In wake of this conclusion, some individuals in the player base have tried to theorize other possibilities for what the gameplay segment was. Some suggest, from the fact that that the we routinely skip to KAY/O's 'face' display back in the lab, and that the first 'segment' is assumed to be a series of simulations, that the entire cinematic itself is just a single large simulation in KAY/O's head - the Radiant War, the various gameplay battles, all of it was just a figment of his robot imagination.

However, if the Radiant War did actually only occur in a simulation, a lot of other aspects behind KAY/O's lore would break down. For example, why would KAY/O suddenly develop such an intense affection for Brimstone? Where did he find the torn scrap of Brimstone's shirt? Why would the portal at Breeze go through its various phases of activation before his arrival?

Other similar theories have also emerged, but they all ultimately fail to address the same issues given above. In the end, the most likely explanation is that it was just a dev clip filmed much earlier into KAY/O's development, not meant to be analyzed with the intense scrutiny that it has suffered through.

### The Radiant War

*The Radiant War is a large and complex topic, separate from this cinematic. Here, only the information relevant to the trailer has been listed. For more information on the RW, please see its page*

If the gameplay is the most emphasized segment of the trailer, the one of the RW is undoubtedly the most thought-provoking. The topic of the Radiant War is heavily interlinked with this cinematic; as the 22-second long clip shown here is one of the primary sources of information behind it.

The first, and most prominent points that the trailer shows of the Radiant War is the sheer destruction that it caused. Every single shot we see is filled with some form of destruction. The looming air of chaos and hopelessness is audible even in the music, which for this segment is uncharacteristically somber, filled with deep and heavy vocalizations.

It is very easy to gloss over the sheer extent of the ruination that the war caused - it's not just a couple avenues or a small city that was wrecked. This was total and utter destruction, the whole world over. This is emphasized by the news coverage of the war being made in all languages: this is a crisis faced equally by all people at all corners of the world.

The ruined Kingdom logo, shown in the second scene, implies that despite their monolithic wealth and power, even Kingdom was not spared from the carnage of the war - a mark of the magnitude of the repercussions.

## Notes

* While KAY/O's 'face' is activating, a series of letters flicker on and off, seemingly at random, under the progress bar. When overlaid, the letters spell out 'INITIALIZE'
* At the start of the cinematic (when KAY/O is pushing into A Hall), Brimstone does activate his bracer for a second, but he doesn't use any abilities in that instance.
* At 0:45 in the trailer, we see KAY/O throwing his knife, which is labeled 'All-Purpose EMP'. However, the text on the handle is mirrored.
* Omen technically shouldn't have been able to teleport in behind KAY/O, as he was visibly suppressed and shouldn't have had his powers active.
* Reyna's laugh in the RW segment is one of the three voicelines that can be heard in-game with her *Dismiss* when ulted. This could imply that Reyna had *Empress* active in the stand-off.
* Icebox is the only map not featured in the trailer (excluding maps not present in-game when the trailer released)
* The Spike in the final clip is already half-defused, despite neither KAY/O nor Brimstone ever being shown trying to defuse it prior.

## Sources

* KAY/O Agent Reveal Trailer - Youtube Go