Counter-Strike 2 is real and it's here

Counter-Strike 2 has officially been announced by Valve in three new YouTube videos, each of which are explaining a comprehensive system update that will contribute to an overall different game.

One of the videos talks about tick-rate, a focus of the community as they have desired to rely on 128 tick servers, which provide an overall better feel for the game. Currently in Counter-Strike, you have to rely on 64 tick servers, much to the chagrin of competitive players.

In the video, Valve explains that they are integrating "sub-tick" upgrades which means that tick rate is actually no longer an important factor within the game. This means that no longer will the game have any sort of delay as all actions will happen responsively.

This changes the way that bullets, movement, and other in-game affects are altered.

Throughout the video, the gameplays shows all of the classic Counter-Strike maps, however they all have upgraded graphics and look just ever so slightly differently. We are likely to see more as it comes out.

The second video posted shows one of the biggest changes that we will likely see in the game compared to previous versions - smokes are now dynamic. As Valve explains, smokes are now volumetric three-dimensional objects, meaning they now interact with the environment, and the environment can interact with them.

Smokes naturally fill the space they are thrown into rather than having a predetermined bloom, like in the Source 1 engine. This should also remove one-way smokes, as all players will see the smokes equally. In addition, gunfire and grenades now interact with smokes in novel ways.

Shooting through a smoke will leave a temporary gap in the smoke, allowing you to see through it to the other side. HE grenades, as it looks in the video that Valve have showed, leave a large gap in the smoke temporarily, allowing all players to see through it.

As part of Counter-Strike 2, all the maps are also getting a facelift to look brighter and easier to see, while still keeping the exact same layout. Some maps just had improvements to lighting, so called "touchstone maps", such as Dust2.

Other maps, like Nuke, have received upgrades including a "physically based rendering system that produces realistic materials, lighting, and reflections." Finally, some maps, such as Overpass, have been completely rebuilt from the ground up in Source 2, using some of the advantages in map building that Source 2 brings which make editing and building new maps much easier than before.

Here are some examples of the updated maps:

Counter-Strike 2 is scheduled to come out this summer, with limited betas given out based on recent Counter-Strike playtime, trust factor, and Steam level!