Mirage has had as close to a remake as is possible to get without being too exciting.
There are both gameplay and graphical adjustments.
Gameplay-wise, they’ve opened up the skybox.
And they really have- here’s how it looked before.
Each part of the map was separated from the others.
If you were lucky there would be a narrow gap to throw grenades through.
And now it’s a large, open box.
The sky’s the limit, and it’s no longer a limit.
There are still spots where grenades will bounce off the skybox, but these may actually
help to bounce your grenades back into useful spots.
This skybox change is GOOD.
People are already finding all kinds of new and exciting smokes since you’re now able
to throw them across the entire map.
Moving onto other gameplay changes, they’ve replaced that dodgy cover at the back of B
with a much more robust and reliable wall.
Stand here and you’re hidden, stand here and you can peek over, crouch and you can’t.
Much simpler!
And whereas before you could shoot through it with almost any weapon, it will now stop
pistol and SMG shots, but the deagle and rifles will still pass through.
Those horrible buggy broken corners that used to be portals to another dimension have been
closed up, here’s one of them at B and here’s how it is now.
And the same at T spawn.
Shop to B has been tweaked and twerked in some rather odd ways.
A well-lit wall has been added to this corner, probably to make it more obvious when somebody’s
hiding behind the shelves- which you can still climb on top of, by the way.
The vents that I never noticed in the first place have been replaced with an overhead
beam and some nice moving fans!
And the walls to the left of the window have been shuffled about a bit.
There’s less space to stand in front of the shelf here, and the box of boxes has been
lazily stuck half way through the wall.
They knew what they were doing here!
Moving onto other places, these metal posts in mid no longer exist.
You could say they’re just a mirage!
Bullets will pass straight through them, so will grenades, and you won’t be able to
swipe them with your knife.
You can still stand on top of them.
Anyone who’s ever tried grenading short, only to look like an idiot and to nade themselves,
will be very thankful of this change.
They’ve also removed that fiddly little…
wooden thing here.
There’s now only a thin ledge to stand on, which I assume is used to remain hidden from
anybody in sniper’s nest.
This corner to A from Palace has been smoothed off, giving people in this corner a bit less
cover from the site than before.
More importantly, it gives you a surface to bounce grenades off of.
And even more importantly…
it makes the design more consistent with the diagonal ceiling trim that was there already.
Terrorists rushing B can rejoice!
The fiddly entrance has been replaced with stairs, which Valve claims lowers the ‘skillceiling’.
It’s all fresh in our minds now, but in case anybody’s watching in 3 years or so,
when CS:GO’s the biggest, most popular PC game again, this bit used to be made from
junk that players thought you had to jump onto, which would stop them dead in their
tracks, slowing any teammates unfortunate enough to be behind them.
It was a problem at all matchmaking levels.
I know it happens at LEM for a fact because I’d do it deliberately because I’m a horrible,
horrible person.
And the ladder on the other side of the approach has been replaced with some crates, because
ladders in this game are also horrible and the fewer of them there are, the better.
You won’t get stuck when trying to drop over this bit any more, whereas before you’d
dangle like bait for anybody watching from mid.
A few of the textures have been brightened a bit, and the doorways in A connector to
mid have been shifted so they’ll no longer mask a player stood in front of them.
The same has been done to the main Terrorist entrance to A.
The door has gone to brighten and to simplify the visuals in this area.
Moving onto visual changes, there have been a few.
But without direct side-by-side pictures, it’s easy to forget how they were before.
Bombsite A in particular shows the changes nicely.
The large building near T spawn has been retextured with one of those special new blended textures
that let it realistically blend between paint and rock to imitate wear.
This is all very nice and makes it look a whole lot more convincing.
I’ve always found Mirage’s architecture to be a little inconsistent.
Maybe the map went through several designs, or perhaps they used beta Dust2 placeholders.
Whatever it was, this update has brought about a more consistent look to the map.
This doorway is a perfect example.
The old one was detailed- more so than the new one, but it didn’t look right!
Even though they’ve replaced the 3D decorations with a flat, 2D version, it looks a lot better
and more in-line with the rest of the building.
They’re phasing out the old Dust2 door texture one place at a time, it seems.
Nice that they also bothered to adjust the position of the drink in the guard booth a
bit, I’m sure that’ll massively improve the map.
A bit like this bar stool on the approach to B.
Also note the removed dresser and lamp from this area.
Congratulations to anybody who spotted these, as they were not mentioned in the patchnotes
at all.
The lighting seems brighter- probably using a different compile config or whatever.
A lot of the map has been simplified, with pipes and debris being removed.
The nice blue lighting at bombsite B has gone.
This doorway above mid has been closed for some reason and they’ve removed elements
of the 3D skybox that you probably never saw, but that I kind of liked.
It now looks as though the whole world is floating in the air, though you can’t tell
that from anywhere in the level.
They also got rid of those distant clouds, something that I DID notice.
The big towers have always looked a bit disjointed- and I think they still do.
Ignore how they look grey in these comparison shots- I’ll assume that the latest update
broke the old one in some way or whatever.
But their lighting hasn’t ever matched up with the rest of the building.
They used to look super washed out and foggy, but now I’d argue they look too clear, and
the black bits, too black.
You can see that as I fly away, the rest of the windows get washed out by haze, but the
windows on these towers remain perfectly dark.
The exception to this is THIS tower near B, which is part of the level itself, so the
fogging issue has to be something to do with the 3D skybox.
Still, even with these faults, it’s nice to see more detail lavished on them, even
when viewed from across the entire map.
And those are the changes to Mirage, arguably the map that was most in need of a facelift.
You can check out my other video on this update, where I cover the weapon changes, HERE.
And I hope to also do a video on Canal’s changes, since I think they’re readying
the map for competitive play and I have some things to say about that.