The New Battlegrounds Map Feels Too Much Like Fortnite

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds continues its slow and steady trek of battle royale evolution with its (unfortunately codenamed) “Savage” map that launched into limited-access beta earlier last month. It shows a new direction for the game, one inspired by that other battle royale that has stolen the spotlight, and not necessarily a direction Battlegrounds needs to pursue.

It’s a smaller map, clocking in at a total map size of 4km by 4km, a quarter of the size of its larger predecessors Erangel and Miramar (both about 8km by 8km). The total number of players on the map hasn’t changed, however, so you’re still dropping in with ninety-nine other combatants. This time things are just moving quite a bit faster.

It’s impossible to look at this new, jungled map and not recognize the influence of Battlegrounds’ most high-profile competitor, Fortnite: Battle Royale. The map of Fortnite is also much smaller than Battlegrounds’ first two maps, and uses that size difference in its more fast-paced and cartoonish action.

Beyond the obvious visual similarities between Fortnite’s map and Battlegrounds’ newest map, they have a notable similarity in their design, both being based around more “balanced” mapping than previous Battlegrounds maps. The villages and points of interest in Savage are relatively evenly-spaced, and the roads connecting them feel more purposefully placed than the more naturalistic design of Erangel and Miramar. It feels more designed than those earlier maps, which have a kind of unintentional sprawl that resembles how real towns are developed.