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Overwatch's Antarctic Peninsula is back. No, stop booing, it's been reworked. We have nothing to worry about now—I think. The rework has been in the oven for quite some time, with the map being removed from rotation back in Season 20, and now it's back with some pretty substantial changes.
"The Antarctica Peninsula has been reworked to create cleaner engagements, smooth out team pushes, and make meaningful flank routes throughout the arctic tundra," Blizzard says in a blog post. Antarctica wasn't the most creative map: a lot of indoor spaces were ridiculously claustrophobic while the outside areas were just mosh pits of death. It also didn't have much variety when it came to engagement points, with teams usually entering the objective from one of two chokes.
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- Sublevel: Objective entry points have been widened, and the side entry point staircase has been changed.
- Icebreaker: The main entry point to the objective has been changed, instead of the main entry being the high ground on the left you'll be funneled through the bottom door way or to the right side which is now an open air entry point.
- Labs: The back room has been opened up, there's now a cover on the side entry, and there's no more guardrails on the vantage point. We can't see what the right-side vantage point looks like right now, so that may also have some changes.
The main throughline seems to be widening choke points, giving each map more viable entry points, while also creating better backspaces for flanking heroes to make use of. In theory, this does fix my biggest complaint about Antarctica which was that the map layout promoted boring and flat fights. Less coordination was needed before as you would all just dive into the objective and scrap it out until one team came out on top. Now, however, it seems like team synergy and coordination will be rewarded.
It's a pretty straightforward rework, with the sole exception of a little spice added to Sublevel: a new environmental hazard. As seen in the Season 2 trailer, if you soar too high on Sublevel you'll be hit with an auto freeze effect, which will send your immobile body plummeting back down to earth.
This won't mean much to most heroes, but for flying heroes it'll be a pain in the butt as you'll have to manage incoming fire from ground heroes as well as the barrier of death in the sky. I can't help but feel as if the biggest loser in this change will be Jetpack Cat, as she can usually fly indefinitely and as high as the skybox allows for with little to no consequences. But now the cat will be forced to play a little lower, making it prime fodder for everyone else trying to focus her.
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