Jungle, not snow, as many hoped, will be the setting for the new PUBG map.
Revealing plans for 2018 in a blog post today, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds creative director Brendan Greene showed off the first-ever look at PUBG's third map. Here it is
As marked, this unnamed, 4x4 km tropical terrain is one-quarter the size of Miramar and Erangel, which are each 8x8 km, including aquatic zones. "It’s a much smaller map and should give you all a much more intense and faster paced Battle Royale experience. It will offer a higher player density and shorter matches and we want to get it into your hands early this time around so we can use your input to make it a great experience for everyone," writes Greene.
It's unclear whether the new map will also accommodate 100 players, but the mention of higher player density seems to indicate that the capacity won't change much, if at all. The new map will go live on PUBG's test server next month.
Based on the concept art, the new map will only have five or six zones with structures, including what looks like a hillside village that runs east-to-west in the northeast. This raises big questions about loot propagation on the map—it would be a big change for loot to spawn outside of structures, so perhaps smaller buildings aren't accounted for in this concept art.
The rest of the island appears dense with vegetation across three high-elevation peaks and into flatter areas closer to the coast, while terraced land lines the center. A murky river splits the mass into three smaller isles—what will we call them?
