This year's Gamescom had a very large focus on PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, with the event hosting the very first professional PUBG competition. Creator, Brendan Greene also showcased the new desert map, which he has since confirmed will be 8×8 km in size.
Originally, people speculated that the new map would be a smaller 4×4 km, but Greene took to Eurogamer to say that “For 100 players an 8×8 just makes more sense and it gives more flexibility when we move onto custom games and things like that.” This is the same size as the original Erangel map, meaning there's plenty of space to duke it out in the battle royale scenario.
Greene also confirmed that there would be definitive borders surrounding the map, meaning those canyon mountains we can see in the screenshot could act as a wall rather than the scale-able terrain I had hoped for.
The map is still being worked on, especially regarding the balancing of where you can enter and what is restricted. Greene explains that if everywhere was accessible, particularly the higher floors on the taller buildings then the map would be quite intensive for systems.
The map will be available for players when it is ready, with Greene stating that he currently doesn't know when that will be.
KitGuru Says: This larger map size is much more preferable in my eyes, unless they were to reduce player count. And with the map in such early stages of planning, there will be much more to look forward to regarding its final release. Are you looking forward to the desert map? What do you want to see in it?
This game is my current unhealthy addiction, it’s been over 20 years since I served in the military but it’s amazing how much little bits of training come back to you, I feel sorry for my poor friends as I bark at them to remember the seven ‘S’ of concealment completely forgetting they have worked in banks and hospitals, thankfully they just tut as I charge towards the enemy forgetting that my Uzi is on single fire not auto. Anyone else made the price of the game back yet selling the unopened chests on the market? I’m just entering profit now, might get myself a free game by Chrimbo : )
I don’t like that areas are going to be restricted. There is no point to add all of these buildings in if they are unusable. Nothing more annoying than fake buildings in games.
I hope they don’t implement this, but they have said that they will. I hate games like this. I’ve seen games in the past that had buildings that were more unrestricted; granted, they did have performance issues.