Overwatch 2's new Antarctic Peninsula map dropped with the launch of Season 3 on February 7, where you'll find penguins, snow, and a sort of functional ice fishing spot.

The control map has three different points of attack: the science lab, the area surrounding the mining drill, and on the icebreaker. Each is surrounded by natural paths made of ice and snow, which, according to the designers, were quite a challenge to create.

"We're used to making real-world references, modular, based on streets and cities. Suddenly you say you're going to do Antarctica, and you Google 'Antarctica,' and you go, oh, this is a problem," said level designer Trey Spisak, expressing that there are few visually distinct places in Antarctica, aside from the general climate.

Because of this, the new map iteration process took longer than others because Blizzard had to think deeply about how the new map should look. We had to work with [art director Dion Rogers'] team to figure out what was feasible from a technical standpoint, not just in terms of how it looked, and to make sure it didn't have too much ice or too much snow."[7 [According to Lead Narrative Designer Gavin Jurgens-Fihri, the map is broadly based on specific locations in the real world. According to lead narrative designer Gavin Jurgens-Fyffry, the map is loosely based on a specific place in the real world. 'The Antarctic Peninsula is on an actual peninsula. It's a huge peninsula that looks like part of Antarctica stretching towards the southern part of South America."

While I was not able to see or play with any footage of the map, the screenshots provided by Blizzard show a map that follows the landmark-based map design of "Overwatch," with surprisingly uneven and unstructured terrain around them The terrain is spread out over an unstructured terrain. Existing maps based on New York and Toronto are clearly made to look like real-world cities. Flying around the map in Normal Match, the streets and alleys feel realistic. The Antarctic Peninsula is not the first nearly original map in Overwatch 2, but it may be the most visually striking.

One of the three capture points had a huge excavator nearby, almost becoming a damaging environmental hazard when in close proximity. It didn't work, but the team said they would like to play with similar ideas in the future. I don't know about environmental hazards," he said. But we did add an environmental bonus to this map in the form of penguins. Penguins can't be killed, but they will react if you are the type of monster that shoots penguins. You can also ice fish by shooting them into the water, which will cause fish to jump out of the water. Also, the snow on the map uses a new shader technology that leaves deep footprints on the ground.

"If you want to create a snow angel, you can actually make your character walk around and actually create this. We found that many of the players on our team were using this new shader we developed to create nice designs in the snow," Rogers said.

Season 3 of Overwatch 2 will launch on February 7 and will reintroduce the ability to earn free skins (opens in new tab).