Thanks to the map being covered in snow, players will leave tracks everywhere they go, leading to a new hunt or be hunted style of battle royale
Vikendi, PlayerUnknown’s Battleground’s new snow-themed map, has finally been revealed, with a cinematic trailer that first aired during The Game Awards on Thursday night.
The map, which is set in Eastern Europe, takes players to a wintry country full of abandoned cities blanketed in snow. Vikendi is PUBG’s first 6 km by 6 km map, making it directly in-between the sizes of Sanhok, the game’s newer smaller map, and Erangel, the original larger PUBG map.
But it’s more than size that makes Vikendi unique. The map also adds environmental hazards like frozen rivers and lakes that can send players careening out of control if they don’t drive carefully, or forests that are far more dense and tightly packed with trees than other maps. And then of course, there’s the snow, which deforms around players as they move through it making tracking opponents an entirely new element of PUBG’s game play.
Shortly before the reveal, Polygon spoke with PUBG’s world art director, Dave Curd, to talk about Vikendi, the map’s unique gameplay and what exactly went into making the perfect PUBG snow map.
Polygon: Since PUBG’s release, fans have been excited about the idea of and asking for a snow map. What made you feel like this was the right time to actually make it?
Dave Curd: From the beginning we knew there was interest there, but our challenge as game makers is to discuss why make a map, why is this map special, why should we take on this endeavor, what do we want to provide that the other maps don’t provide? So at the beginning of our discussions we really kind of fell in love with the idea of tracking players and kind of the hunter becoming the hunted.
