Overwatch 2Season 4 has almost arrived, bringing a new Battle Pass, a new Hero, and a slew of balance changes to Blizzard’s popular FPS. WhileOverwatch 2Season 4 won’t feature a new official map, it will include a unique new Arcade map called Talantis that arrives in an event mid-way through the season.
The Talantis map was designed during a Twitch stream at the end of 2022, where a small team ofOverwatch 2developerstook suggestions from the community and created a map to their specifications. The map is set in an underwater city, which has been converted into the headquarters of the Talon Organization. Although it has been confirmed that Talantis is not a canon part of theOverwatchworld, players will still get a chance to try the map for themselves in a special Arcade mode event from April 25 to May 1.
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The First Community-Designed Overwatch 2 Map
The Twitch MakesOverwatchstream was broadcast in December 2022, and invited Twitch viewers to join Game Director Aaron Keller, Art Director Dion Rogers, and Community Manager Andy Belford in making a newOverwatch 2map. Viewers decided that the map should be underwater in the ruins of the mythical city of Atlantis, and the theme would bea Talon headquarters. Talon is the dark reflection of the Overwatch organization: a group of mercenaries and terrorists with ruthless methods and hidden goals.
Talantis is a Control map, the game mode which sees teams battling for control of a single objective, where the first team to occupy the objective for the required amount of time wins. However, the Talantis that was designed during the December livestream was only a single objective area, while allofficialOverwatch 2Control mapshave three areas that come up in a random order for a standard best-of-3 competition. Unfortunately, Talantis will only feature the single objective designed during the stream, and Blizzard haven’t announced any plans to expand the prototype into a fully-fledged Control map.
An Unusual Map Design for Overwatch 2
As players might expect, the design of Talantis is extremely unusual compared to mostOverwatch 2maps. During the stream, players demanded plenty of jump pads, death traps, and giant fish. While jump pads can be found on someOverwatch 2Arcade maps, elevators are far more common in the standard Quick Play and Competitive maps. Similarly,Overwatch 2maps like Iliosoffer plenty of opportunities for environmental deaths, but they require players to accidentally run over an edge or be pushed off by the enemy. Instead, Talantis features sections of the ground that open up periodically, dumping any player foolish enough to walk over them straight into the water below.
This heavy use of jump pads, environmental hazards, and floating platforms may not be so common in modern FPS maps, but they do call back to some of the classics of the genre. The 90s sawtitles likeQuakeandUnreal Tournamentdominate the multiplayer FPS scene, and many of their most beloved maps made heavy use of these features. Classic FPS maps were highly vertical, fast-paced battle arenas, and learning how to move through them was every bit as important as having good aim.
Although Talantis is not a canon map, its appearance in the game opens up the possibility of more community interaction inOverwatch 2’s design process. A particularly enthusiastic reception from the community may even promote the idea of a wider range of official maps and game modes in future Seasons.
Overwatch 2is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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