It’s all going lunar in a new map preview for the Horizon Lunar Colony in Overwatch, over on the official YouTube channel. Now that people have got a good look at the map, the developers have gone into what the aims were, and how they went about making it. There’s one key point though: it’s going to be going live June 20, alongside the rest of patch 1.12.
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In the short video, there’s a lot to unpack about the design process for Horizon Lunar Colony. The moon has apparently been one of the places the team have wanted to created a map for for a long time – hinted at by its presence in King’s Row, with the colony visible to the naked eye – and the chance to explore Winston’s backstory has been a major reason for that.
There’s also some references to the animated short “Recall,” easter eggs like peanut butter on Winston’s bed, the telescope room, and so on.
In case you haven’t given the map a shot on the PTR yet, there’s more gameplay footage, plus a couple of hints for unique interactions you can pull off. For example, the low gravity area gives a chance to pull off some impressive Roadhog hooks, and airlock doors offer interesting cover for a charging Reinhardt. Jeff Kaplan seems adamant that the map will be changed to suit what the players want, too, and they’re looking for as much feedback as they can to make it as balanced and as fun as they can.
There’s no official patch notes as of yet, but we’ve got all the PTR changes ready for you to give an idea of what you might be able to expect.