Overpass, being one of the oldest maps in CS:GO, is one that’s most in need of a graphical
overhaul.
Fortunately, we’ve seen a lot of this new Source 2-based version, in the videos that
Valve has released for Counter Strike 2 so far.
Let’s compare it with how it currently is in CS:GO.
Bit of a spoiler: if you’re here for gameplay changes, you’re going to be left underwhelmed.
The purpose of this remake isn’t to change how the map plays- it’s to make it prettier.
But there are also a few new things littering the corners, which I presume will either prevent
players from going there, or will serve as handy boosts to let players peer over walls.
Because Overpass hasn’t had enough of those spots already!
Of particular interest to me is this corner of Party.
The wall has been swapped out for a door.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN.
This door already exists in another spot of the map so I can demonstrate what to expect
from it here.
It isn’t that tall, so if you jump you can peer over the top- though I’m not sure how
this will much help on Party, since there seems to be a hedge directly behind it.
What is this, the secret garden?
So the second possibility is that this is a new wallbang area through to long A, coming
out about… here.
Yeah that would have purpose.
I’m unsure how bangable it will be, mind- from the front it looks like the door is made
of wood, but behind it is a thick slab of metal.
Rifles can just about penetrate it in its current form.
Also, check out this gorgeous reflective door handle!
It reminds me of Nvidia’s oldest tech demo.
Which is still so much fun to play.
Park has had its playground activities changed in order to make them better for gameplay.
That awkward slide has been made into a more robust box shape that you can hide behind.
And those swings you could walk right through previously have been removed and swapped out
for some of those springy horse things.
So this is probably good news for players of the game, but a sad day for children, since
we all know that swings are the BEST.
I thought at first they had tried to block this corner up, but standing on top of it
and jumping might give you a way to peek over the top of this sloped wall, and depending
on how far you can edge outwards before falling off the thing, you might even get a powerful
defensive spot to shoot from.
I’m just not sure at the moment.
Because it isn’t a particularly wide object.
These doors on bombsite A are open, which was probably done to block any sort of sight
line between them, AND to finally show us what’s inside these massive crates!
And it turns out it was…
SMALLER crates.
This corner used to have horizontal pipes, which have been removed, making it feel more
spacious.
But these new vertical pipes that have just been installed will stop you from hiding right
in the very corner any more.
And I noticed that this fountain is bigger.
Just thought I’d mention that.
Check this out.
I suspect this new plank of wood is probably to stop players from doing this.
THERE.
That was my attempt at covering gameplay changes.
Boring, isn’t it.
We’re getting this whole new game engine and I’m here trying to explain what difference
an open door of a container will make.
So let’s get onto the graphics!
Let’s get the big obvious bit out of the way: it’s brighter, more colourful, and
I’m hoping will be one of the bigger jumps in graphical fidelity since it’s one that
they’ve categorized as an ‘overhaul’, which they claim will have been ‘fully rebuilt
from the ground up, leveraging all of the Source 2 tools and rendering features.’
But remember: the old Overpass is much older and more primitive than the ‘old’ Dust2
was.
So does this overhaul catch it up to the Source 2 version of Dust2, or is it going to be even
more advanced again?
Well I guess we’ll find out.
I’d wager it would be MORE advanced, just because the Dust2 remake came out in 2017.
Ancient came out later in 2020 and that one was more graphically advanced, so it only
makes sense that a map made 3 years after that one is going to be at least as advanced
as that one is again - if not more so.
That makes sense doesn’t it?
And like they said earlier, they promise that this one is going to leverage ‘all of the
source 2 tools and rendering features’ …whatever that could mean.
Yet despite all this, it’s still using some props that I recognize from Left 4 Dead 2.
This damn tree model you can see here, was used in that game 14 years ago in 2009, and
then was used again in Overpass in CS:GO.
And it looks like it’ll be used AGAIN in this brand new, build from the ground up Source
2 version too.
Come to think of it, it was also used in those early Source 2 screenshots of the Left 4 Dead
plantation, so I guess it’s a tree model that Valve really likes and is happy simply
updating its lighting, again and again and again.
And maybe that’s all it needs.
Though I can’t say the reuse of this hedge excites me.
It isn’t very exciting.
And I’m not sure what’s going on with THESE trees in the background.
Everything about them seems sort of flat and semi-transparent-looking?
Nothing really explains why they look like this.
Because it looks wrong.
And Source 2 is meant to look right.
But enough about the foliage.
Because a lot of other things have changed.
And I definitely take the improvements for granted… until I look back at what we had
previously and realise just how primitive CS:GO is.
I mean, just look at these rafters in CS:GO!
Now I’ve noticed it, it’s sort of the quality you’d expect from a Half Life 1
map.
Let’s boot it up and see if we can find something similar.
There, that didn’t take long.
CS:GO is goldsrc engine confirmed.
Oh my God there’s one under this bit here as well.
We’ve all been staring right at this the whole time.
Compared to that, the new overpass has nice shadows and indirectly lit concrete, and some
new, weird dangly rope things- I can see one passing straight through the metal here VALVE
PLS FIX.
Another amusing thing I noticed were these lights up here.
That’s how they were in CS:GO, right?
Lights what are you doing, why are you pointing up there.
Go home lights you’re drunk.
And it’s lovely to see the graffiti reworked, and for the blob monsters to have some new
friends to hang out with.
And whereas the Dust2 version in Counter Strike 2 has lost some of the decorations on the
ground, here on Overpass, it’s gained loose bits of concrete, and 3d chunks of stuff whereas
previously it was decidedly very flat-looking.
I love this graphics stuff, but some of you might be interested in this game for the gameplay.
To which I’ll draw your attention to THESE panels around the site.
They were metal, but now they look more like a thin stretched fabric which I assume will
be easier to wallbang through.
I notice the same sort of material all the way along this section of the wall here, which
was previously mostly concrete, but I need to know what’s on the other side before
I know how bangable it will be.
I love this new view, beyond the map’s playable space.
Previously it looked like just an extension of a Half Life 2 map -and about the same quality
as one- but now it actually looks like a proper city, complete with an even bigger overpass!
So there you go: there’s always a bigger overpass out there somewhere.
And now that the rest-rooms have been turned into a full-blown restaurant, you can even
see it from bombsite B. Which will help me to get my bearings, as I always found it difficult
with that massive hedge that divided the map in two.
Where is this map based?
Germany, obviously.
I’ve always been a bit confused over whether it’s Berlin or further South in Nuremburg-
the TV tower would suggest the latter, though that’s no longer present in this Source
2 version of the map, and THIS sign now says that we’re in Berlin.
So it’s pretty obvious where it’s set now.
And there IS still a tall tower on the map- it’s just moved position somewhat and isn’t
that easy to spot in the footage we’ve seen from this map so far.
But here it is, and you can see that it’s now very clearly based on the one in Berlin
instead, gaining 75 metres in height.
How did Valve do grass in Source 1?
They didn’t.
At least, not on Overpass.
It was a flat thing, and if you were lucky you got some shrubs like this.
So this is perhaps the biggest improvement to the map with Source 2.
Because they can do GRASS, now that the technology is finally here to light and shade it to an
acceptable standard.
I like water, and shiny surfaces, and I like water.
And Overpass looks to be getting 3 different sorts for me to analyse!
Maybe 4.
Though I’ll warn you now, I’m not too hopeful about any of them being cutting edge
stuff.
The first type of water is this fake stuff, where it’s just a shiny texture on the ground.
Now this has been a feature since Counter Strike Source, but Source 2 does more with
them, and Valve’s clearly proud of them too because some of the new clips we’ve
seen so far exist solely to show how shiny these reflections can look.
Overpass now has its own WET ROOM, here in tunnels.
CS:GO already had some reflective puddles here, but they’re a wasted opportunity and
the reflections didn’t do justice to how bright these lights should have looked.
Counter Strike 2, though, makes this area bright enough to actually be able to see,
AND makes these reflections clear enough to make out the room that they’re meant to
be mirroring.
Along with all of the mistakes.
I’ve said great things about Source 2’s new parallax-corrected cubemaps, but this
is about the worst example I’ve seen of them so far, with the pipes appearing to bend
and point in the wrong directions in the reflection.
As if I didn’t have enough distractions when guarding this place already.
Such primitive reflections seem better suited to smaller reflective surfaces, like on this
wet mud texture outside.
Ignore the obvious water for now and focus on these shiny bits of mud as I scrub back
and forth through this clip.
Oh yes.
THAT’S what I like to see.
A big improvement over whatever the hell THIS texture is meant to be.
The version in CS:GO looks awful, DESPITE appearing to have cubemaps, bumpmaps and even
a detail texture applied to it already.
This reflective mud looks to apply to the whole place now.
I love the way the colourful graffiti can be seen in it.
And just look how it picks up the muzzle flashes.
Gorgeous.
That was the first type of water.
The second I found is in this fountain here.
Just as a reminder, here it is in CS:GO.
Half of it looks calm, the other half is having a frantic disco on the surface.
And here it is in CS2.
This scene is a little too brief for me to get a good look at it, but the water itself
seems pleasantly coloured, though that submerged rock surface shouldn’t be shiny like that
because the shininess should be coming from the water that’s coating it being so reflective,
but obviously when it’s underwater like that, the surface of the water is up here
instead.
So this is either an oversight from Valve, or this fountain previously didn’t have
water in it and then when Valve finally figured out how to do water in Source 2 they added
it in but forgot to change the fountain’s texture to reflect this.
Or rather, not to.
BUT: this brief clip of the fountain shows us something INCREDIBLY important!
It shows us that the water reflects the fountain itself.
Parallax corrected cubemaps can’t do this.
This is real-time reflections of some kind.
Rejoice: for it means that CS2 can do real reflections.
Thanks, Valve!
Now all we have to do is to figure out whether it’s screenspace, a planar reflection like
how it’s done in CS:GO already, or if this is a separate ‘map’ containing just the
things that the fountain should be reflecting.
Though… by the way this bit of the reflection disappears relative to the fountain’s position
suggests that it’s screenspace reflections, which would be a little bit disappointing.
It just means that if you look up and down, what’s shown in the reflection will appear
and disappear.
But again, a brand new feature for the Counter-Strike series.
I’ll have to wait for the map to be released before speculating further about this, but
this could be the best example we’ve seen yet of real-time reflections in Counter Strike
2.
…And then there’s this brief clip as well, which also shows accurate reflections of stuff.
And this would be one of the less-scutinised spots of the map where they could perhaps
get away with a cheap effect like screenspace better.
Which gets us onto the final sort of water shown in Overpass, which you can see here
on bombsite B. It looks sparkly yet murky, and looks like it even has debris floating
on the top, bit like that screenshot we’ve got of Canals.
But is it better than the existing water that’s in the CS:GO version of Overpass?
I mean, this is beginning to look a bit dated now but I still like it.
It has style.
And sewagey residue floating on the surface, which I always like to see in water.
But perhaps we need to stop asking which looks best, and start asking: which looks most realistic?
So I took a trip to the Sewage Factory, where they generate this stuff before pumping it
into England’s rivers.
And it turns out: even in these places, water has a diverse variety of different looks!
Some looks like water, others, brown water, others have a layer of duckweed or foamy sludge
coating the surface, and others have suspicious looking things floating about inside them.
I didn’t understand Valve’s obsession with flowmaps until I encountered this delightfully
turbulent example just here.
So if nothing else, this ‘business trip’ of mine did open the door to some new map
ideas.
De_salination, perhaps.
So there: CS:GO definitely has the right idea by having a top layer to the water, but it
should be whiter and foamier, perhaps coating the edges of the stream like raw sewage does
to our beaches.
So I can’t complain too much about Overpass’s depiction of waste water, but some foamy fecal
residue around the edges would be most welcome.
‘Oh SHIT it’s the sewage police’
I had learned too much, and unfortunately my real-life investigation into this fecal
matter was cut short.
But come Overpass’s Source 2 release, nobody will be able to stop me from submerging myself
in this sewage until I get some solid answers.