TomOkihara was innocently inspecting some gloves, when suddenly THIS happened. What is this place?
How did he get here? And why is he filming it with his phone?
Some things we’ll never know the answer to. But I DO know what this map is. To view it like he’s
doing right here, you just press ‘esc’ while in the Premiere mode’s map selection stage.
And you can visit the map normally, too. You simply open the console and type
‘map lobby_mapveto’, and you’ll be placed in a black room with 4
bots who have no idea where they are or what they’re doing there.
Poor them.
Enabling cheats and going into noclip will allow you to explore this unusual map.
Normally, it’s full of scripted events to control your camera movement and to allow
this map to behave as a ‘map selection screen’ for premiere’s competitive mode,
which you can avoid for as long as it remains in warmup mode. So just use the console command:
mp_warmup_pausetimer 1 and you’ll be free to explore
to your heart’s content. Here is an overview of the entire map, and all of its secrets.
So down here, you can see the 5 warmup lobbies that you’ve likely fought in before. This room
shares similarities with the war room from the movie, Dr Strangelove- similarities like the
wall of TV screens, the multiple telephones, Dr Strangelove’s wheelchair just here, and the fact
that some people don’t fight in the warroom. But you’ve already been there! What’s more
interesting are the OTHER 5 rooms contained within this map. These two are where players
first spawn- and they’re just big black rooms. There’s this one in the middle which
Valve has used to put all the ‘programming’ to make this map work the way it does.
And last, you have these two rooms, which are the REALLY interesting ones.
Depending on whether you start as CT or T, you’ll see a blurry version of one of these rooms,
as premiere’s doing its thing in the foreground. But it’s still cool to be able to venture about
them, as Valve HAS bothered to make them properly themed for both sides.
For instance: terrorists are in some dodgy basement somewhere, planning their evil deeds.
Cardboard -sort-of- blocks out the windows, and there are crates of equipment stacked in
the corner, and this guy sat next to it, with a phone placed right next to him.
This person’s setting up the bombs in some way. Yup, BOMBS. They’re not silly
enough to go in with just one of these things! This guy’s inspecting all of their weapons and
ammunition, though I suspect his main job is to keep all of their outfits clean, judging from
these multiple washing machines over here! There’s some lovely world-building going on,
with a load of half-eaten fast food on the table. They may be naughty, naughty, terrorists,
but they still have time to chow down some pizzas and to get the blood stains out of their clothes.
And lastly, these two terrorists are inspecting blueprints of what I assume
is their target. But… WHAT IS IT? When I inspected the map file,
this prop was called ‘cementplant’. So I took a trip to the cement plant,
which is one of CS:GO’s older coop missions, and discovered it right here. And as I approached,
some bloke putting on a fake British accent explained what it is:
‘These are blueprints for one of Kriegel’s railyards! Why would he
target one of his own trains? WHAT’S HE MOVING?!’
And I’m rather ashamed to admit, even with those pretty heavy hints,
it still took me a while to figure out that this was a map of de_train,
but sort of flipped about to an angle I’m not used to seeing it at, and with the undercover
bits shaded out. So there you have it. That’s what the terrorists are planning.
Meanwhile, the CT room looks a bit different. It’s much more professional,
and with no weak points like windows to speak of. Of the 5 CTs in this room, 3 are inspecting the
equipment. Fun fact: almost every weapon in this map is a prop that cannot be picked up,
apart from this UMP45 for some reason, which can be picked up by the player.
The final two CT’s are sat, watching this rather snazzy-looking slideshow, which shows images from
the same map that is plastered on this whiteboard here. These are from the more recent ‘Autumn
Harvest’ coop campaign. So unfortunately, it seems like the T’s and CT’s are going to different
places and probably won’t run into each other. I do appreciate all this world-building that Valve
does, for what could very easily have been just a blurry background for a map selection screen.
…Although it doesn’t seem as though they built it all from scratch!
Indeed, the CT place literally is the place from the start of the Autumn Harvest mission,
only if you load it up for that mission, the EXIT room is open, leading to the
surface, and to a military base of some kind. So that’s where the CT’s are operating from. But
the terrorists? Who knows where this room is. It’s got to be somewhere NEAR to de_train’s location.
But unless I’m missing something obvious, unlike the CT’s room, we have never set foot in this
room before. Not in any of the coop missions. And not in any of the proper maps, either.
It is a new place, made solely for the premiere gamemode’s map selection screen. Isn’t it nice.
That’s more effort than Valve put into the last Operation! Where were the coop missions, Valve