CS:GO Free Replacement Counter-Strike 2 Officially Revealed

The long-lived (and long-loved) Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is getting a “technical leap forward” with Counter-Strike 2, Valve announced today.

CS:GO, the fourth game in the Counter Strike series, released in 2012 and has remained in a staple amongst competitive multiplayer shooter players and has maintained a robust competitive esports scene, with its most recent ESL major taking place in Rio de Janerio, Brazil, last fall for a pot of $1.25 million. Defending champs FaZe Clan snagged the W.

The Counter-Strike 2 limited test kicked off today, according to an in-depth blog post by Valve, to evaluate a subset of features to shake out any issues before the worldwide release” sometime this summer as a free upgrade of CS:GO.

Valve outlined a number of changes and improvements coming to the game, including:

• Smoke grenades will operate as “dynamic volumetric objects” that will interact with the environment and react to lighting, other gunfire, and explosions which developers say will create “new opportunities.”
  • Bullets and High Explosive grenades will be able to push smoke for a short time in order to clear sightlines or expand occlusion.
  • Smoke will expand to fill spaces “naturally,” seeping out of open doorways, broken windows, up and down stairs, expand in long corridors, and combine with other smokes.
• Developers say that “sub-tick updates are the heart of Counter-Strike 2,” and that it no longer impacts moving, shooting, or throwing.
  • “Previously, the server only evaluated the world in discrete time intervals (called ticks). Thanks to Counter-Strike 2’s sub-tick update architecture, servers know the exact instant that motion starts, a shot is fired, or a ‘nade is thrown,” developers wrote in the blog post.  “As a result, regardless of tick rate, your moving and shooting will be equally responsive and your grenades will always land the same way.”
• Maps will be “cleaner, brighter, [and] better” thanks to a major overhaul that will see levels rebuilt from the ground up by “leveraging all of the new Source 2 tools and rendering features.”
  • Map upgrades have been categorized by full overhauls, upgrade maps,
    • Full overhaul include Long A, Lower Tunnels, Restroom and Bombsite A.
    • Upgrade maps use Source 2 lighting, which includes a “physically based rendering system that produces realistic materials, lighting, and reflections,” developers said. Side-by-sides are showcased for Bombsite A, Ramp, T-Spawn and Tunnels.
    • Touchstone maps are described as levels with “solid foundations that players can use to evaluate gameplay changes from CS:GO to Counter-Strike 2. These have improvements to lighting and character read, but otherwise haven’t been changed,” the blog post, for the Back Plat, Long A Doors, CT Spawn, and Mid Doors.
  • CS:GO’s legacy models and finishes, and all stock weapons are getting high-res model upgrades and some are getting new models. Your whole inventory will come with you to the upgrade.