Same concept, same release date, same voice actress, the similarities between Zeri and Neon seems to be too hard to ignore.
Fans of League of Legends and VALORANT have just been presented to brand-new characters for their respective games, with Zeri bursting onto the Summoner’s Rift and Neon joining the agent roster later this month. Many others, however, have observed a few parallels that appear to be more than a coincidence, such as the fact that the same voice actress performed both characters.
Neon and Zeri are both coated in vivid, neon hues and have twintail hairstyles. What’s more, these two characters have the same voice. Vanille Velasquez, a great Filipina voice actress, stated that she was cast in both roles after auditioning for both.
“You have no idea of the sheer excitement I had when they first told me I was auditioning for not just one, [but] two of their biggest games,” Velasquez said on social media. “I will keep saying thank you [to] Riot for trusting me to be a little part of your games. I hope I’m doing Zeri & Neon proud.”
People observed in Zeri’s champion trailer that her whole kit and abilities are based on electricity. She is incredibly mobile, with a swift dash and the ability to jump over obstacles, and she carries a rifle that fires shots at a rapid speed. In the animated parts of the video, she also appears to discharge lightning from her fingertips.
Overall, her skills and abilities resembled those of Neon, who lives in an entirely other universe in VALORANT. In the first-person shooter, Neon’s abilities include a sprint (something no other agent in the game can accomplish), a slide, and an ultimate in which she discharges lightning from her fingers.
However, because VALORANT is technically headquartered in the actual world, Neon is officially from the Philippines. Zeri, on the other hand, is from Runeterra’s fictitious world of Zaun. Even still, folks can’t help but wonder whether this is the beginnings of a probable crossover between the League and VALORANT universes. This isn’t the first time these worlds have intersected, as characters such as Jett, Killjoy, Phoenix, and Yoru teleported into Piltover during the RiotX Arcane event’s visual novel.
Whether these parallels have a deeper meaning or not, one thing is certain: Zeri and Neon will excite the fan base when they release.
Riot’s lead champion producer Ryan “Reav3” Mireles acknowledged on the League subreddit that the champion team and the VALORANT agent team collaborated and worked on Neon and Zeri together from her beginnings.
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