SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 1 — The City of Light is coming to video game Overwatch and, for PC players, may have already arrived.

A new map has been introduced to Overwatch and its cohort of PC players, having gone live on the game’s optional Public Test Region.

The charmingly presented, sci-fi tinged simulacrum is bordered on one side by the Seine, complete with riverboats floating past and an enormous Eiffel tower stretching upwards on the opposite bank.

Advertisement

More immediately concerning to players are the map’s cabaret theatre at one end, complete with robotic singer to serenade the attacking team before matches begin, and a spacious palatial residence, with its warmly lit library and reading room, at the other.

Not only was the map’s arrival sudden and rather unexpected, but in winding through the map’s cobbled streets and paved walkways, police station and bakery, players have discovered a cute Easter egg: a handful of interactive pianos whose individual (and seemingly invulnerable) keys play notes when shot.

Advertisement

The Overwatch incarnation of Paris is a second France-based location for the 2016 PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC game, after a fictional Château Guillard, set in the country’s southeastern Alpine region, was released as part of a similar free update in August 2017.

Related to that, one of the existing 29 Overwatch playable characters is also French, a damage-dealing sniper called Widowmaker, who assassinated her French husband, a special agent, after having been recruited and brainwashed by the game’s terrorist organisation.

Overwatch has become well known for the global nature of its maps and characters. Its developer, Blizzard Entertainment, has a European office in the southwestern outskirts of Paris.

The new map entered testing a few days into the Overwatch Lunar New Year event, running January 24 to February 18 in celebration of the Year of the Pig, and is expected to be released into general rotation on computer and console in due course — three weeks has become the Blizzard norm. — AFP-Relaxnews