The Initiator
Project A is a PvP game in the FPS genre, and a team game in which two sides of five compete against each other.
Unlike other shooters you can get through on aim alone, it is a hero shooter: four roles, twenty-one agents, and the unique skills each agent carries all have to be used well. How cleanly a team builds its composition swings the outcome, and on certain maps certain agents climb the tier list, so the lineup changes from map to map. There is none of the looseness of playing the same comp forever.
Constant balance patches mean there is hardly anything you could call a standard composition, and the way each season rewrites a map's agent pool is one of the game's real strengths. Handing players a different kind of fun through endless change, before they have time to get sick of it — that is Rioat's signature way of running things.
The pro gamers who have to study all of it, of course, are dying inside.
Even in a Project A that never stops changing, one riddle still hasn't been solved. Which role matters most?
Project A has four positions. The entry, who goes into the site first. The initiator, who can read where the enemy is. The sentinel, who can take the most space, own it, and hold it. The controller, who on attack throws the smokes that erase the enemy's dangerous angles and choke off the push.
The ideal answer is that all four matter. Depending on temperament, though, the answer can be anything. Coach Yoo Seonho points to the sentinel, strong at owning space. KZ's captain, Spax, points to the entry, the player forced into the worst first-contact gunfights.
And I think the most important role is the initiator — the master of the information war, the one who can learn where the other team is standing.
What I locked was Fade. She is one of Project A's initiators, and along with Sova one of only two agents who can pull confirmed information. Her concept is tracking enemies with the power of nightmares.
On stream I had done nothing but entry and sentinel, over and over, so the viewers had questions about the Fade pick. Fade is an initiator through and through. On the role where using your skills matters most, you need a real understanding of the agent before you can do more than your share.
It didn't matter much. I had been a pro for nearly four years. I had retired, but the years I had already eaten didn't just vanish.
"I can play all of them."
A pro trains until they can run most agents above average, so the roster can swap roles without the round falling apart.
Pistol round, and we were starting on attack. Out of 800 credits I spent 500 on the Ghost, the most ordinary pistol you can buy. Of the 300 left I put 250 into my C, Prowler, and closed the shop.
Our call for the round was an A-site rush. The other team had no Killjoy. We stacked up in front of A main and waited for buy time to run out — and then our Jett spoke on the team line.
"Fade... are you Eunha, by any chance?"
"...Huh?"
And they were asking whether I was actually Eunha.
"Yes?" I said into the comms.
"I think that's her," Phoenix said.
"Whoa, Eunha, the showmatch was incredible. I'm a real fan."
Before I had time to answer, my own team had already decided I was Eunha. I am Eunha. Still, the feeling was strange.
"We should give Eunha the Jett."
"Ah — no, it's fine."
I do like Jett. I don't like her enough to take a teammate's pick. Since the showmatch, and especially since the final, it felt like a frame had been locked onto me: no brain, just mechanics. I play initiator pretty well too...
"Oh, it's really her. Fighting, Eunha!"
The moment I turned the agent down, Jett spoke like he had been waiting for it.
"Huh?"
"Whoa, it really is Eunha. Fan here. The showmatch was great," Killjoy said.
"...Thank you."
My identity was blown anyway. They were calling themselves fans, so a decent reply was the least I owed them.
"Yeah... I didn't think people would know me this well."
Back when I was a man, I had known the showmatch existed and nothing more. I had never paid it any real attention. I hadn't expected even a top rank like Chaser to care about it this much.
"All right — fighting!"
"Fighting."
Still, I had matched with people who said they were my fans. I ought to show them something worth watching.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Buy time ended. The first round began.
I watched for the enemy Reyna's eye and KAY/O's flash, wary of a push up our A main, but they never came forward. They meant to hold the site hard. That wasn't bad for us. Jett set herself to entry, Snake set the screen, and I finished preparing a skill of my own.
Fade's basic skill, and her core: the E, Haunt. On use she throws an orb in the direction she is facing, and after a set time the orb drops to the ground. When it lands, every enemy inside its vision is revealed, and those positions are marked for the whole team.
Together with Sova's recon bolt, it is one of only two information skills that can pull an enemy's position for certain. The way you use it is a little different. A recon bolt can bounce twice, so you bank it off walls and stick it in a specific spot on site — a bounding arrow. Fade's Haunt, thrown up onto the structures around the site, is what people call an angle Haunt. How well you use that angle Haunt is the single clearest measure of a Fade's mastery.
"So... from here... looking here..."
I had memorized this once. I wasn't sure I still had the spot right.
The instant Haunt left my hand, our first contact, Jett, went into A.
"Entering. Go, go."
Whoosh.
Jett hit the site on a smoke-and-Tailwind combo. Inside her smoke, the Jett who had just entered and the enemies already holding site could not see each other. But a duel between a Jett who has to live in that narrow pocket of smoke and an enemy team spread across the site splits advantage and disadvantage with brutal clarity.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
This was exactly the kind of moment where eating a smoke shot — what people so often call a grief shot — would not have been strange at all.
The Haunt thrown before Jett entered had landed on the roof of a building around the site, and it found the Snake and the Jett inside.
Tat-tat-tat-bang!
That information flipped the fight between Jett and Snake completely.
"Wow. Good Haunt."
From Snake's side, there was no way to know exactly where in the smoke Jett was standing. Jett only had to shoot, at her leisure, the Snake Haunt had already given away. She took Snake cleanly and stepped out of the danger, and the rest of us entered the site behind her.
We still couldn't relax. Haunt had caught more than Snake. One more enemy was on it.
"There's one more. Using Prowler."
Fade's C, Prowler. A skill that can scout and stand in for an entry. On use it runs straight for two and a half seconds, or Fade steers it, and when the duration ends it vanishes. If an enemy steps into its detection range while it is out, it charges them on its own. On contact it bites, laying on a Paranoia debuff that cuts vision and sound for 2.75 seconds.
An enemy revealed by Haunt is tagged with a debuff called a trail, and a thin line runs from the Haunt to them. Judging by the direction of that line, the enemy Jett had dropped off toward CT. I sent my C after her at once.
Fade's Prowler sits in the same family as Ground's Scout, but Scout is steered by the player. A Prowler only takes its heading from Fade. The rest is the Prowler's own AI — and that AI is miserable. The best way to use one is on an enemy already caught by the trail. A Prowler you steer yourself is one thing. A Prowler sent along a trail rides that line and sprints at the target.
Bang. Bang.
The enemy Jett tried to shoot the Prowler down. It came in too fast. She never broke it.
"Jett's blind."
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The call had barely landed before our Jett ran her down, took the blinded Jett, and cleared A completely.
"I'll plant," Snake said.
If someone asked me the right time for an info skill, I would answer like this: the instant after your front-line entry goes in.
We were already up five to three, an overwhelming numbers advantage. There was no reason to force a pick.
Jett and Phoenix, forcing space into CT and Art, died for nothing, and the round was no longer decided.
"Ah, shit, I overforced so hard. Sorry."
"Ah, fuck. Reyna's a monster."
Worse, Reyna had landed the Devour and stepped into her monster state at 150 health. I was holding a Ghost. Even a headshot would not kill her in one.
"Mm. This got tangled..."
And I was inside A site. Killjoy and Snake had gone out A main. I could not get a scrap of help from them. Hold this angle and I would be eaten from both sides. Better to gamble. I pushed toward CT and tried to split the fight wide.
What I met there was only Reyna.
Again: Reyna was in her monster state, and my gun was a Ghost. A headshot still would not kill her in one bullet.
Pew. Pew.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Well. Two to the head and she dies anyway.
"Nice!"
"Whoa, shit — she came back through mid?"
I had thought their cover was slow. They had swung through mid and come back into our side of the map.
Our Snake traded the Astra, but Astra had not come back to A main alone. KAY/O was with her. Two of them. Snake had to be traded as well.
That left them with only KAY/O, and us with only me. A one-on-one. The spike was already down, so the round favored our side — except the fight with Reyna had dropped me to ten health.
Teammates still on the voice line, and the viewers watching the stream, clenched their hands and watched the two survivors.
Pop.
Bang.
The fight was decided in a few seconds.
