What Counter-Strike 2 testers have revealed about the new game

CS2 testers talked about smokes, maps, movement and other bits of the new game that Valve announced.

A group of community figures were flown out to Valve headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, to test the new Counter-Strike 2. Among them were Chad "⁠SPUNJ⁠" Burchill, Alex "⁠Machine⁠" Richardson, Hugo "⁠Hugo⁠" Byron and Harry "⁠JustHarry⁠" Russell, who are now in Malta working the broadcast at ESL Pro League Season 17, as well as streamer Erik "⁠fl0m⁠" Flom and legend of the game Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg.

During a lull in the EPL broadcast between series and shortly after the news of the new Counter-Strike 2 announcement by Valve, those present shared some of their experiences while testing the new game live on stream.

Smokes

"Molotovs and incendiaries just look different visually," SPUNJ said during the segment, before moving onto the big changes to utility in CS2 that were made to the smokes, one of the defining elements of the game allowing players to take map control, execute attacks, or retake bomb sites.

"Smokes are color-coded, blue tint for CT, yellow for T," JustHarry said, but that's just the beginning. The smokes are now reactive elements that adapt to their surroundings, including bullets being shot through them or grenades dissipating the smoke momentarily.

"One bullet does nothing, but if you're unloading a mag they disappear for a second and then it comes back in," Machine said about how the smokes adapt to the weapon and range that they are fired from.

Maps

The maps have been reworked in three different ways. There are Touchstone maps, like Dust 2, that have barely received any changes except for improvements to lighting and character read, but otherwise haven't been changed.

Others were named Upgrade maps, like Nuke, that use new Source 2 lighting, including a physically based rendering system that produces realistic materials, lighting, and reflections, and Full Overhaul maps that have been fully rebuilt from the ground up, leveraging all of the new Source 2 tools and rendering features.

"Overpass is completely overhauled," Hugo said, "so many new angles, this one is completely different visually."

Tick rate

Another big change will come with tick rates. In CS:GO, Valve's matchmaking servers were played with 64 ticks, while professional matches and platforms like FACEIT use the faster refreshing 128 tick servers. Now, this distinction will be gone with the new engine. "The key with sub-tickrate is that smokes thrown in MM and thrown in pro games will now be the same," Hugo said. "What this means, however, is that we might have to learn every [utility] lineup all over again."

Movement

The new engine also brings with it changes to movement, with improved character reaction. "It was cool to see how much more detailed the models were and there was a lot more micro-movement in the player model," JustHarry said. "In Source 2 it was super noticeable, the head moved independently of the chest, independently of the arms."

Machine concurred with the stating a similar feeling. "In source 1 you're like a static rectangle," he said, "but now every button you're pressing is reflected in your character's movement."

Visuals

In regards to the visuals, "the game still looks like Counter-Strike, just tuned up, upgraded, seriously upgraded," JustHarry said. "Visually, the water physics, are mentally good."

"When you run in water, you leave a trail, a ripple of where you ran," Hugo added about the new water dynamics. "If you look at the water, you can tell [that someone has been there]."

Audio

The biggest issues during testing came from a the reworked audio, which really made the players aware of the slight cues that exist in the game and how with them differing the whole experience changed. "The biggest issue we had was audio and how much that plays into Counter-Strike," SPUNJ said, "You don't realize how much the sound cues tell you in Source 2.

"There are three different sounds. There's a ghoosh sound, a dink sound, and a kill sound. The thing that confused us, we're used to having a ghoosh or a dink sound, so when you didn't have that feedback, it didn't feel satisfying. The lack of satisfaction from a kill made it not feel like Counter-Strike. There wasn't enough feedback if you got a frag."

JustHarry agreed. "If you're playing on Source 2, there were times where I didn't realize I actually killed someone," he said. "I couldn't tell you how I killed them. Just from hearing if I killed someone in Source 1, I know if I headshot them, bodyshot them, but in Source 2 I didn't even know if I got the kill sometimes. But we left a lot of feedback, an unreasonable amount of feedback [about sound]."

One of the big changes that could work itself into players' situational awareness is how weapons will sound different depending on where they are shot, which could give additional cues of where other players are on the map when out of sight. "Guns sound different depending on where you are firing," Machine said. "If you're in underpass, it's a closed space, there's echo and reverberation of the sound."

"I didn't even realize I died once," Machine also said. "The ear-crushing death, they got rid of that."

Development

One of the talked about quality of life improvements of having a game on Source 2 will be the ability to make more changes to the game easier. "We saw a developer live change the values," JustHarry said, "it took five seconds and it would completely change how the model moved. [...] It means Valve can ship updates quicker, more efficiently, and easily."

SPUNJ also shared his opinions about the developers, whose silence and distance from public communication has often come under fire from the community. "It's not four or five devs working on Counter-Strike, at one point we were playing matches and I turned around, and I swear to god, it was like 30 people in the room just watching us play," he said. "They cared. It's not what people think of Valve or CS:GO, it's the complete opposite, actually."

JustHarry agreed. "On the people side it gave me so much faith for the future of Counter-Strike knowing that these people are the people running the ship," he said. "I felt safe."

You can watch the conversation on ESL's live broadcast VOD above, starting around the 3h56m mark.