Image: Blizzard Entertainment
The arrival of Talantis paves the way for more community-made maps in the future.
Blizzard’s first community-made map for Overwatch 2 is now live and available to play via the Arcade game mode. The map is called Talantis, and it was created during a special ‘Twitch Makes Overwatch’ livestream in December last year as a collaboration between the development team and players.
Here’s what the map looks like:
If you’re wondering why the map is made up of unfinished textures, that’s likely because Blizzard wanted to port it over to Overwatch 2 with as little changes as possible based on what players wanted out of it. Talantis is an underwater-themed 5v5 Control map that has players battle for control of the objective, and it has a few design quirks not seen in the game’s usual maps.
This map has hilariously large fish swimming around in an underwater Talon base, though that fact is very much non-canon. It also features elevators and jump pads that allow players to get to higher points much more easily, which is important considering the map also sports multiple levels of elevation which lead up to the topmost objective. Everything is roughly visually based on a sunken ancient city, which you can probably guess the inspiration of.
Unlike other Control points, teams need to capture the objective twice to win the game, all in the same location no matter how many rounds are played. There are five ways to approach the objective all in all, so there are plenty of opportunities to catch the opposing team off guard in the next round. Blizzard explained in a blog post that the map has a ‘work-in-progress’ look because fully completed maps take, “several months of development and collaboration of many different teams.” That means we’ll have to wait until Season 5 to see the game’s next big map - but this will do in the meantime.
Talantis is a clear indicator that Overwatch 2 could receive more community-made maps in the future, though this can only happen via more ‘Twitch Makes Overwatch’ livestreams. The sequel doesn’t have a map creator, only something of a game mode creator. Still there’s potential for some Team Fortress 2-level shenanigans here.