PUBG Season 10: Haven is the smallest and most breathtaking map ever

When you join the new map Haven in Season 10 of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, you will experience an updated version of PUBG that has never been seen before. Haven is not only a much smaller residential environment than previous maps, but this map also has the presence of a dangerous NPC faction, always hunting for players.

Creative director Dave Curd said this was the “biggest challenge” of the development team. “The way PUBG plays and the way the game is developed from the inside is that it has to take place over a large area with small clustered areas and sometimes tiny towns. Map Erangel, Miramar, Vikendi and even the small map Sanhok follow this formula. But Season 10’s Haven is not.

Haven is a 1×1 map for 32 players. The narrow space is almost surrounded by structures: people will see concrete and iron, old factories, warehouses inspired by the iron and steel industry in the Ohio valley and America’s Rust Belt.

“This is the newly updated map that we wanted to challenge ourselves: Can we make it like real life architecture? Can we create practical roads? We can have a setup that looks like real life, but still has the potential to be interesting, the game plays out like PUBG?”

Although Haven is an imaginary location, the PUBG Madison team looked to real-life cities like Milwaukee and Philadelphia (USA) for ideas to create the industrial core of Haven.

“The island was once home to a huge steel industry,” says Curd. “There was a crisis or a financial crash in this area, and now the island is almost deserted.”

While the previous inhabitants have left, Haven isn’t completely empty when you arrive. It is the home of Pillar, the private military faction that appears in the game as NPC mercenaries. They will appear scattered throughout the city, guarding valuable armory and armory.

You have the choice to either stick your forehead or dodge them, but this isn’t the only group of Pillars in Haven. A surveillance helicopter also patrols the streets from above and, if detected, calls for a “death truck”.

Pillar Tactical Truck, the official name in the game is the ‘2.0’ version of the loot truck introduced in the Sanhok rework of Season 8. Instead of following a certain path on the island, this ‘death truck’ will find you.

“It ran around, possessed a terrifying machine gun and shot fire bombs through the windows.” Curd described.

The updated Season 10 new map also gives PUBG a new look, thanks to new developments in the lighting section.

“To match the city setting, we created a very dark, deep sunset and a gray, melancholy sky. It’s very ‘moody’, with lots of lights and shadows. We hired the amazing lighting member who used to work for Star Citizen, and he really took game graphics to the next level.

With many residential areas to travel with and the elevated highway that cuts through the city, Season 10 has more emergency parachutes for players. In addition, there is a new Survivor Pass called Breakthrough, with colorful PUBG-themed skins and equipment.

Season 10 also brings one of the most significant changes to the PUBG format ever. Obviously, the game is influenced by several rival titles. Specifically, Escape from Tarkov is also set in an industrial setting and AI-controlled enemies.

“As soon as you add NPCs in PUBG, will people think the game has been turned into Destiny? Will PUBG be turned into Tarkov? This is a reasonable question,” Curd replied. “In fact, from the very beginning – I mean the second week of PUBG’s release – I was always asking ‘how do we make this battlefield look real?

Curd said during the concept process, there were wild ideas, like deer and birds, to help the player feel this is a real-world survival game, where you have to worry about other things and not only players. Working from home during the pandemic gave PUBG “a year in the desert,” and he and his team in Seoul used this time to revisit those early ideas.

“We talked about a lot of things we wanted to try in battle royale and wanted to try it in PUBG,” he said. “2020 brings Karakin, Random Royale and Paramo and we want to bring real world effects like Sanhok, and now Haven.”

PUBG Season 10 new map has been updated starting on December 10.