Counter Strike 2 currently only features Dust2, but we’ve been given pictures
of some of the others so I went and compared them with CS:GO’s versions.
And the take-away from this is that they’re… inconsistent. Some maps, like Short Dust,
have received complete makeovers. While others like Lake have remained almost the same.
We’ll start with the picture of ar_shoots. This was one of the original maps for CS:GO back
in 2012, and has remained relatively untouched ever since. Yet despite it receiving a complete
graphical overhaul with Counter Strike 2, it may look rather familiar, having ripped most of its
textures and assets from the map, ‘Ancient’. Now the penny drops! Ancient was the last map to be
added to CS:GO, late in the year 2020, making it 2 and a bit years old now, where does the time go.
HOWEVER, from what I’ve heard, Valve has been working on Counter Strike 2 for 3 years, so it
could be that when they made the map Ancient and all its assets, they had the standards of Source 2
in mind, in order to make it easier to ‘port over’ once they did finally launch Counter Strike 2. At
the time, Ancient certainly did feel like big a ‘step up’ graphically, compared with other maps
in CS:GO. And its lower framerates reflected that! As for the gameplay of ar_shoots, it looks like
there will be fewer indoor areas now, with a few of the huts replaced for roofless ruins.
And the chances are, these thicker walls will be harder for bullets to penetrate because you
could wallbang all over the place in Shoots with its various thin surfaces. The original was a
hotchpotch of similar looking huts and rooms, so I’m kind of pleased that we’ll now only get 1,
or maybe 2 huts in this whole map. Graphically on this map, I’m most
looking forward to getting right up and into these 3D bits of grass to see Valve’s latest
attempt at making good looking foliage. Also: can see right through this bit. Valve pls fix.
In stark contrast to Shoots, Office hasn’t changed much at all. Even the
trees and shrubs appear untouched! Which is sad, because CS:GO never had good-looking
trees and shrubs. So something tells me that this hostage map wasn’t Valve’s top
priority. This looks to be one of the maps that Valve has simply ported over,
but re-rendered using the Source 2 engine which is why everything now looks much
brighter and better lit. Looks like they also changed the sun’s angle ever so slightly,
and I’m sure they’ve made it sunnier. I’m unsure whether this is blue sky or overcast but the fact
I can’t tell, shows that it’s sunnier! Also, it no longer seems to be snowing. RIP snowflakes.
I suppose that since this map has been left mostly untouched, it better highlights what
HAS actually changed. They’ve bothered to remove and to re-route some of the wires
and to FINALLY make this distant pole visible. And they’ve made these cables into 3D-looking
things rather than the black lines they were in CS:GO. Oddly, they’ve still kept this one which
goes straight into the wall of the building. These window textures are the same as before,
but now with a shiny frosty layer around the edges which seems to reflect the sunlight.
They manage to have remade the snow while not making it not look any better. But
there’s definitely SOMETHING going on with this snow texture. It looks like these icy
patches here COULD be super reflective, though such a difference is most likely
to be appreciated in motion. Which a still picture such as this one is not!
Something only I’ll get excited about is how much clearer these distant ariels look in CS2. Now,
my screenshot from CS:GO was taken at maximum settings, at 4K, 8x AA and all that,
so the fact it still looks better in this 1080p Counter Strike 2 screenshot suggests better
general image quality… or at least, that these screenshots have been taken at a ridiculously
high resolutions, like 8K or even 16k. In my opinion, Office is one of the maps most in
need of a full make-over. Here I’m showing footage from a video I made just after CS:GO was released
in 2012, where I compared the different versions of the map over the years and you can see that,
even when CS:GO was first released, they didn’t give Office a full make-over. Sure,
the worst textures and models got replaced, but other bits did not. So even in Counter Strike 2,
it looks like some parts of the Office map will be virtually identical to the Counter-Strike Source
version of the map, which was one of the first source 1 maps ever made! Yes, I know that if it
aint broke, don’t fix it. But COME ON. 20 years old. Go back the same length of time again and
Tetris was brand new! Here I’ve loaded up the 20 year old Counter-Strike Source version of the map
and you can see that bits like these icicle-laden cover bits, and these steps here, look almost the
same as they do in the Counter-Strike 2 preview image. In the new game it’s relying on nothing
more than improved lighting to try and modernise some geometry seen in this map! Which is INSANE.
Lake – no offense- looks worse than it did before. I like a sunny blue-skied map as
much as anyone does, but when they’re ALL like that, it starts to feel like
we’re living in Teletubby land. Old Lake had the right idea. It was still sunny,
it still had blue sky, but it also kept more unique-looking clouds and stuff as well.
But this new one? Blue-sky-ified. Everything has been made brighter! Sure, it improves
visibility and probably the gameplay as well, especially with these clear white window frames,
and the GLOWING barrels down here that you never saw before because they were so dark. The distant
cliffs as less noisy-looking now which show characters stood in front of them far better.
And anything that was previously dark in the CS:GO version has been extensively brightened.
And at least the blocky 4-sided roof has been upgraded to being a blocky 8-sided roof.
But this water is unforgiveable. It previously looked see-through and kind of reflective. Bit
like water should look! But this new stuff? Blue. That’s it. Blue. And no reflection in
sight. The enigma of Source 2 water continues. Water always looked quite nice in Source 1. So
is Valve really happy with the future of water in their games looking like this?
Canals. Oh this is more like it. The water in Canals looks amazing in this still shot! It LOOKS
3D. It even has debris on the surface. But I still have questions regarding the reflections. Because
some things, like these wooden spikes, and this tunnel section here, appear to have reflections
to them, and that looks nice. But other bits, like the reflection of this red flag thing, imply
a fixed cubemap of some sort where the reflections won’t properly line up from all angles. It’s still
much better than how Lake’s water looks- don’t get me wrong. And it could be that because this
is a screenshot from beyond the playable space, we’d never see such GLARING issues in normal
play. Maybe that’s also why this outside-facing wall don’t have a damp line along it, simply to
save resources because they’re not visible from the play area itself. Still, of all the pictures
we’ve seen of Counter-Strike 2 so far, this is the screenshot that keeps me hopeful that water
in Counter Strike 2 could still look great. It's strange that the textures look the same,
but less detailed than they did in CS:GO. It seems odd that they’d take screenshots of
Counter-Strike 2 NOT on the highest settings, but maybe that’s what’s happening here.
But this is nice: you see some spikes here that weren’t vis ible in CS:GO. And these aren’t new
details- they WERE here in CS:GO, but because they were in another section of the map they
weren’t previously drawn from this region. So this suggests that Source 2 keeps details
visible everywhere when they should be, even if they’re a long way away -like the painting that
you can see in here, or this window just here- and that these sorts of details remain rendered,
even if in an entirely separate part of the map from where you’re currently stood.
So this is a step in the right direction! At this stage I can’t completely rule out
the possibility that they’ve just tweaked the map to make it visible. But in ANOTHER video
I’m working on, one to do with benchmarks, it suggests that Counter Strike 2 is more generous
with when it shows details- it doesn’t bother fading them out in the same way as CS:GO does.
Not even at lower settings. It seems to strive for model visibility parity across all settings.
Not a lot else to say about this map though. It’s Canals and still looks like Canals.
Short Dust in CS:GO was ancient, based on a 2012-version of Dust 1, before the 2017
graphical overhaul that Dust2 got to make the whole thing look prettier. So this makes it harder
to compare the two because it’s now ENTIRELY different. But it is still only short dust,
because bombsite B remains closed off. So there’s nothing to suggest that Dust1 will
return. Though I don’t want to rule it out. You can see a few new recessed areas around
the main building. But are these deep enough to conceal a player? So while
there’s more ‘depth’ to the gameplay there, the rest of the area looks less cluttered,
with fewer crates to hide behind in the underpass, and wider looking catwalks either side of it,
which should make it harder for teammates to block you. Yet you know they still will.
I won’t talk much about this one because we already have access to Dust2 and most
of the stuff here is the same as what we can see already. Which makes it BORING.
And the last image I’m comparing is BAGGAGE. Which has gone from being a grotty luggage sorting area
to being a place from Mirror’s Edge. I’m not complaining. Looks much brighter and
more readable, with a good strong blue and orange colour scheme going on throughout the whole image;
it’s got orange trims on the edges of things, and up near the top of the image you can see beautiful
light blue ceiling beams. Even the sky itself has a strong cyan colour! But what’s more interesting
than this is a new, super high-up walkway going over the top of the map, with what looks like
ladders leading up to it either side. So this is a gameplay change that we can see here! And it
should let players peek over into the other team’s spawn from a distance, which previously was a very
easy place to defend from. Not so much any more! I wonder what these screens will show. Looks
blank right now, but it could be used to broadcast important
match information or something like that! It's honestly crazy how different the 2 versions
of this map look. It’s easy to take for granted that it’s always looked like this but then,
when you flick back to the old one again, it’s disgusting! Because some of the maps in CS:GO are
13 years old. And they’re beginning to look it! Thanks for watching! If there’s interest in
this kind of stuff then I’ll cover more of the images we’ve been given so far.