Overwatch 2 presents its new map based on Antarctica: what you should know

Overwatch 2 it continues to be renewed and is about to celebrate the arrival of Season 3 of the game. Y Blizzardits developer, is preparing a series of contents for this new cycle of the famous hero shooter.

That is why we were invited to a virtual round table with media from around the world to find out about the new great addition: Antarctica.

To do this, Art Director Dion Rogers and Lead Hero Designer Trey Spisa revealed details of the map. What should we know about this new location?

whatWhy a map of Antarctica?

“Basically, we have a list of places we’d love to visit in real life, a place we love to see our heroes go, and we’ve worked our way through that list throughout both games and finally got to the bottom line. what we wanted: to feel the Antarctica”.

“This is great because some of our maps are very less based or may be based on a particular hero, so it could be related in some way to the story of Mei and Overwatch”.

“We started with a lot of references and images. We started sharing and working in the same room together.”

“Then we start the 2D design usually on paper and that helps us solve a lot of problems that we would have to find in 3D, which would take us a lot longer. That’s where the narrative team starts what’s called the ‘future story document’. ‘ We imagine the lore that we could relate to this map and in this particular case in Antarctica is that we have the story of Mei and what happened to her.”

“Despite this, it is not certain if the map of antarctica It will be used in the PvE mode that will be released in the future.”

Difficulties in making the map

“This is our first control map for Overwatch 2. And one of the things that we normally do, especially from our artistic perspective, is to choose the general color or material that we would like to see on the map. In the case of ice, it’s actually very difficult to create in games, but we really wanted to do it: have ice caves and Northern Lights. And this requires some graphical challenges that we have never faced before, because usually Overwatch It’s a generally city-based game.”

The first control map for Overwatch 2

Now the game plays differently (it’s not 6v6 anymore, it’s 5v5) with less tanking and generally less barrier health, so we’re really thinking about this new world without that less character.

The maps are a bit tighter. Now there’s a little more cover so you won’t be easily found out.

Overwatch’s balance so far

“In each season we learn from the past. And obviously we are talking about Antarctica today, but the season is filled with all sorts of events and fun things to get players back into the game. And I think a lot of fans have been asking for a new control map,” says art director Dion Rogers. “It was decided to build a new map, but we wanted to make it unique from the other control maps. An extra amount of effort to make each point dramatically different from the other, so we need to balance that out. This game map is made from scratch. We didn’t have to go back and edit anything. Now there’s only one tank and you have two supports for damage control, so I think players will find it fun.”