Is CS2's Inferno Too Detailed?

With all of the updates Inferno has received since launch, it is apparent that Valve is keen on making it more competitively viable, but are these changes destroying the map's beauty and immersion? Let's take a look...

0:00 Counter-Strike 1999
0:26 Source 2 Capabilities
1:08 "Decluttering" Inferno
1:26 Library
2:11 Garage Door
2:53 Balcony
3:19 Miscellaneous Changes
4:13 The Solution?
5:32 Conclusion

Special thanks to:
• 3kiksphillip for inspiring me to make a CS2 video

#cs2 #counterstrike2

[wonkglorg]

I love the details they added when making the changes, instead of just removing parts they gave it a story and a reason to be different

[breadmilkYT]

CS fans: NOO! This three pixel gap in the wall is too dark! Enemies are too hard to see! Valve MUST fix this immediately!
TF2 fans: ah yes, the enemy can shoot through my spawn in this 17 year old map, splendid, I shall wait patiently for 7 eons for a patch, I love this game

[romanrat]

The change at 3:25 is one I'm a little bitter about. It was a really nice fountain before

[EugenijusKrenis]

Changing water pump into a single small pot is like the only change that really feels odd and disappointing, it makes very little sense now, everything else got some environmental storytelling to it or is pretty subtle and subdued without ruining what was there originally.

[Newbyte]

I feel tired of all the maps being designed for pros only. As a more casual player I find quirky maps fun.

[blaine]

Glad you covered this topic, ever since cs2 came out i feel like the player models blend too much with the overall environment no matter the map . Honestly I think they need to work on player models rather than maps for better visibility.

[Coolyo]

Please make longer videos, doesnt matter cs2 or tf2, we like both

[Azaketh]

0:08 Ugh, it hurts man. This was "my" counter strike (Not that I ever stopped playing, I still play to this day, but the memories of this era is still incredibly vivid and still what I think of when people say "Counter Strike") and brother, it hurts realizing that so much time has passed, lol.

[milzs]

I hope they wont remove more and more details, it really kills the looks of the map, especially if youre a mapper yourself

[keeganpenney]

My old mapping community i just rekindled with, this was one of the heaviest thing we mostly agreed on. It becomes so easy to become distracted in something thats meant to be competitive in reflex and skill. If this game was some longer drawn out conflict in rounds, as the round time is reduced so much from older versions of the game it really matters. As a mapper id say make contentious decisions when designing. Its too easy to be swept into the camp of more details these days but keep your maps use case, ie deathmatch maps could have more detail but timer constraint on maps like de_ should be simpler in design practices.

[boiledcabbage]

i really hate sacrificing map quality for competitive gameplay.

[Myiic]

As someone who has been playing a lot of the new CS2 inferno maps I honestly couldn't tell a difference between the the visibility on the older and new version, I play on 1080p and I still had no trouble discerning enemies from backgrounds, these changes don't alter much in my opinion and just seems like busy work for Valve when they have other things to worry about then if a milk crate needs to be removed.

[viriYT]

Appreciate you covering the topic! was a good watch. and yeah, reading all the backlash to the post was very interesting 😅main motive is that CS maintains that balance between map design and competitive gameplay

[AkillesOfSweden]

I think all the maps that is in the competitive pool needs to be kept simple and competitive. They are definitely going in the right direction with all these changes. For more visually appealing maps I think we need to wait until they release a new operation. That’s usually when those types of maps gets their time in the spotlight, and since they are made to play casually most people don’t care about stuff like player visibility or weird clipping

[KipoKupo]

I feel like most of the changes are rather minuscule and don't harm the visuals. In fact for most of these I highly doubt that if you never showed me the before and after I would even notice the changes aside from "library". As for the windows removal I don't think the window even looked good anyways but it is an odd removal since it's really not even part of the problem presented.

[itsjustJex]

Just like all visual assets in video games, maps are a work of art. As long as the originals are preserved, I don't mind them being updated to be less clutered.

[hubanimations]

I think can find a balance between gameplay and visual details. For everything that was removed from De_inferno, the map still looks really good.

[MrRezQ]

Valve: declutters inferno for gameplay
Player model skins: 👁️👄👁️

[littleboyred]

I think the complaints about detail being removed are absurd. I doubt they'd be thinking about those spots or details if it was like that from the start. All that's taking people out of the game, are themselves. To complain on Twitter. There's nothing "unimmersive" about a single wall out of many not being packed with distracting objects.

Kudos to Valve for all these changes! Even ones like windows being removed. It's not just about players not being directly obscured- it's about being able to quickly parse everything that's onscreen. Surrounding clutter adds just that teeny bit of extra time for your brain to interpret things. Even more-so for some autistic people (*like me*) who can struggle deciphering and navigating cluttered, visually-noisy environments. I consider this an accessibility win with zero downside to anyone.

I personally struggle with most modern games due to this and wish more games gave the slightest of a damn.

[MapSpawn]

Level designer here, I prefer to map on Goldsrc. In fact all of these new technologies are not truly level design related. Very little has been done to improve the workflow of a level designer, it's all about details now. Unfortunately details can never make up for a lack of level design, and this is why fundamentally most popular Counter-Strike maps started on Goldsrc. I recognize that the charm of CS comes from working within the creative limitation of Goldsrc, so my new CS2 map is actually a ported Goldsrc map and I am doing what I can in order to preserve the real charm of it all. In art, less is always more, and simple is always better than complicated.