Overwatch’s New Paris Map Is Live, Complete With Working Piano
The map is beautiful, and full of very French features.
Overwatch‘s new Paris map is now live and available to play. You can’t build barricades, but you can rampage through the City of Light’s narrow streets and vandalise its shops before inevitably being gunned down. Or you could ignore everything and just play the piano.
Paris, France, is an assault map, meaning one team tries to stop another team from standing in a certain spot like unreasonably aggressive anti-loitering cops. The map is beautiful, and full of very French features such as a patisserie, a cabaret and the Seine River. The Eiffel Tower also looms large in the distance, though you can’t visit it.
There aren’t yet any Overwatch heroes that call Paris home. Overwatch‘s only French hero thus far is Widowmaker, a purple-skinned sniper, who is based in Annecy rather than Paris. Still, Paris could be considered her map. People always say not to poop where you eat, and I suspect that adage is even more pertinent when you’re an international assassin.
Paris also has an extra feature built into the environment for players to investigate, following in the tradition of Junkertown’s hidden room, Ilios’ basketball hoop, Horizon Lunar Colony’s telescope and Downtown Busan’s dance machine. Two correctly tuned pianos are located on the map, allowing players to tap out their favourite tunes – or at least attempt to before the opposing team mows them down.
The heroes of Overwatch are physically incapable of putting down their weapons to play the instruments, but fortunately the joy of music can overcome this adversity. Mainly because the piano is bulletproof. Players who tried out the Paris map while it was on test servers have already used the piano to play some very recognisable tunes.
Though available now in arcade and quick play modes, Paris isn’t yet available in Overwatch‘s competitive mode. This gives players some time to investigate the new landscape before it has any impact on their ranking. Paris will be added to the competitive roster on March 5.