Joshua Llorente is an Overwatch fan and a self-taught 3D artist. And he’s made a truly remarkable prototype map for Blizzard’s hero shooter that looks like something I’d absolutely want to play. It’s kind of astonishing, to be honest.
In fact, it’s such an excellent looking map that even Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan noticed. Kaplan showed up on Reddit and told Llorente that Blizzard will “be in touch.”
The map, Cairo, is an escort map (get on the payload!) and would probably need some extra polish and lots of balancing tests before it was ready for prime-time, but as a fan-made prototype it’s quite impressive. Llorente used Unreal Engine 4 and somehow really captured the look and feel and atmosphere of a Blizzard-designed Overwatch map. Check it out:
This has the unpleasant side-effect of reminding me how much better Overwatch (and many other AAA shooters) would be if they simply allowed fan-made maps like Counter-Strike does. I played so many great fan-made maps back in the day when I played CS:Source all the time. It wouldn’t have been the same without them. Same with Team Fortress 2. C’est la vie.
See more of Llorente’s artwork (including lots of other Overwatch maps) here.
