Evan: PUBG's new map, Savage, hit the Experimental Test Server overnight. Three isles separated by a central river, it's the smallest PUBG map so far: one-quarter the size of Miramar or Erangel, yet it still accommodates 100 players. First impressions?

Chris: Flying over the map before deployment, I thought, wow, this map is really small. Then I landed and started running around and I was like, eh. It's still pretty big, really! It still takes a while to get anywhere on foot. It's not a broom closet or anything.

Evan: There's plenty of room. I didn't have trouble picking landing spots. If I didn't drop on a big compound, I'd detour to one of the many clusters of wooden huts, which reliably had a UMP or AR inside. I like the temple area a lot. It and other unfinished buildings are completely greyboxed at this point, but it's basically laid out like a hillside fortress, with thick exterior walls and a courtyard centering medium-sized buildings.

Chris: Just me, but where there a lot of vehicle spawns? I feel like I could find a ride really easily, and sometimes I even saw several cars, vans, and bikes in the same general area at the same time. I felt like I was in Far Cry 5 for a minute.

Evan: You mean Far Cry 3? But yeah, plenty of jet skis too.

Jody: I'm the token noob just getting into PUBG now, so most of my knowledge comes second-hand from streamers. Matches definitely feel faster to me. Seems to take less than 20 minutes to get down to a final 10 on the rare occasions when I survive. I don't think that's just because the map is smaller—like Chris says, walking around still takes a while—but because guns are everywhere. I find Vectors like Johnny SMG has preceded me, scattering them across the land. I rarely get to use one before someone domes me—once I got killed while still loading bullets into my first gun—but that just speaks to how quick it can be.

Chris: Even dive-bombing out of the plane as fast as I can, when I hit the ground I'm already hearing gunfire and seeing death notifications. In one match it couldn't have been more than a few minutes before there were only 30 people left. I know there's usually an early wave of deaths in PUBG as people who land in clusters start fighting, but I wonder if so many players being eliminated that early in the match results in the second half of the round being a little slow.

Evan: Savage definitely still has those mid-round lulls, but they do feel clipped, partly because there's just fewer attractive looting areas, period. You're not going to roll up to a major compound 10 minutes in and find pristine, untouched loot inside. Everything seems to get knocked over quickly. And the upside to that is that looting feels compressed. I spent far less time obsessing over upgrades, content with a tier-two helmet and a 4X scope on an AR.

Chris: This is the first time I feel like red zones are a real factor. I wound up in them a lot, had to change my position several times because of them. In fact, with red zones and airdrops happening on the smaller map, I found myself a little annoyed at the constant noise when I was trying to listen for cars and footsteps. Savage feels very loud.

Evan: There's a greater feeling of proximity and danger, a sense that anyone could be in any hut, partly because the interiors are naked and uncomplicated—there's nowhere to hide in them. I don't think I used autorun at all, which is probably a positive. Then again, one of the things I praised PUBG for when I reviewed it is that it's a game that provides flashes of life-or-death intensity, punctuated by social downtime and migration. Savage isn't playable yet in duos or squads, so it's impossible to assess this dynamic.

Chris: Honestly, it is pretty nice to have matches not quite take so long. I know lots of people have lots of great stories about great moments in PUBG, but most of my memories are of sort of waiting around for a long time. Oh, I'm in the new circle? I guess I'll wait to see where the next circle is. Oh, I'm in the next circle? Guess I'll hang here. Three circles later, it's all gotten a bit dull. And then someone shoots me from a mile away. This feels like a bit of an antidote for people who have been playing since the beta and maybe want to speed things up a little.

Jody: One thing that's slower is the circles. Every blue wall of death is can be outrun on this map, and I had a great time sprinting ahead of one through the edge of a red zone, explosions going off all around. The circles still push you into taking risks and getting in fights, but you'll never get caught hundreds of meters behind them.

Evan: Back to the buildings: the huts are sort of a drag. They're copy-pasted all over the island, and barren of any decoration, they don't express the setting well at all. Are the devs going to add some objects to these interiors? That'd make them even more campable. I guess they're not having much of a performance impact on the map, at least.

Chris: It's definitely an early look at an unfinished map: as you said, Evan, some of the buildings don't even have walls, and lots of textures are missing. It feels unusual for them to let players in so early, but I wonder if it's a response to Fortnite, which is not only mega popular now but seems to add new stuff on a weekly basis. Maybe PUBG is trying to keep up by letting players in earlier than they normally would have.

Jody: The empty rooms and checkerboard placeholder textures on the walls give it a Laser Tag vibe I kind of like. It's pretty raw, but I'm glad they're getting the community involved so early and using this opportunity to test new stuff while they're at it, like the Death Cam. I love being able to see how somebody managed that freakish headshot through a door on me—takes the sting off death a bit by making it a learning experience. (I have had a lot of learning experiences.)

Chris: I didn't encounter any weather in my matches, but I'm hearing that people are seeing rain and fog, and that it's dynamic and changes throughout the round. I'm glad they're testing weather again, it adds a little flavor (though I still kinda don't like fog in games in general). They're also letting players spectate the player who kills them (and then the player who kills them, and so on), which at least gives you a reason to stick around and see who wins.

Evan: So far, Savage is a crossbreed of Erangel's forestry with Miramar's spiky elevation. It cuts the vast, open expanses of Miramar (a common complaint), but it also isn't so dense with overgrowth to feel like you're fighting in an authentic, Predator-style jungle. It's more like a jungle-themed PUBG map, which is a little disappointing, though I am having fun. There are more bushes and high grass to hide in, but they haven't had a transformative effect on firefights, for me. 

What is encouraging is the realization that PUBG should probably never release an 8x8 map again, and might be able to get away with even smaller and denser arenas.

By 2020, the world will be full of people hunting each other and occasionally hiding in bushes as battle royales spill out into the streets. They're already on our phones. So of course everyone wants a slice of the pie that's currently dominated by PUBG and Fortnite. Including Blizzard. Overwatch has already experimented with several different modes, from PvE horde romps to small duels, but a battle royale mode would be a considerably greater challenge. 

“A lot of times when I hear some of our fans pitch it, they’re like ‘Oh, just put a card in the Arcade one day that’s a battle royale mode,’ and I’m like ‘Fuck, that would be awesome,’” Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan told Kotaku. “But there’s a lot of design and tech work to get us to that place and not just feel like a me-too game.”

The main issues Kaplan and his team have identified are the heroes and map sizes. Overwatch’s characters are designed to work in a team, with several heroes designed specifically to support their pals. It means that some characters wouldn’t be viable in a traditional last man standing scrap, while others would have a significant advantage. 

Maps are a problem because, unlike Fortnite or PUBG’s battlefields, they’re small and they’re not open. “Our primary engagement distance is usually around 15 to 40 meters,” Kaplan explained. “The Hanamura dojo point B is 45 meters across. I don’t think people realize how tiny it is. Part of what makes Fortnite and PUBG so awesome is that you can have these really long engagement distances.”

It’s still something Kaplan sounds eager to explore, but the changes required to make it work mean that you shouldn’t hold your breath waiting for it to appear. “Building those systems and getting that many players—I think battle royale for Overwatch starts to get into new game territory.”

The Tapanga Machete may not be the most dangerous weapon in PUBG—it is literally a knife in a gunfight—but it might be the most practical. It can mess people up in a variety of awful ways, yes, but it can also be used to clear vegetation, prepare meals, open bottles—and it can be made from just about any decently-sized piece of scrap metal you have lying around. 

The Man At Arms: Reforged guys take their weapon creation a little more seriously than that, however, as seen in the very sweet PUBG machete they created in the latest episode of their webseries. It may not be as elaborate as, say, the Greatsword of Artorias they forged a couple of years ago, but it's still a damn nice blade: Beautiful, deadly, and I bet it'll hold its edge a lot better than your average off-the-shelf unit, too. (Although shmucking pop cans probably isn't going to do it any great amount of good.) 

The video begins with the usual array of requests from fans to make the blade, but swordsmith and Man at Arms: Reforged host Matt Stagmer has a rather more personal interest in this particular piece: He also livestreams PUBG, and other games, at twitch.tv/stalkertron.