Playerunknown's Battlegrounds will let you spectate your killer
Watch some of the new map too
One of the great comforts in Playerunknown's Battlegrounds is knowing that the squad which killed you and the lads absolutely, definitely, 100% went on to win the game - who else could defeat you? This week, the battle royale FPS will start letting players verify this by watching the rest of the round through their killer's eyes. Then through the eyes of their killer's killer if they die too. And so on. It's murder all the way down.
Developers PUBG Corp have also started testing the new 4x4km map in a closed beta. The initial test quickly ran out of keys but more are planned for the coming weeks, and for now we outsiders can watch others playing it.
This week's patch, 1.0 update #9, is now live in the public test client. When you die, you'll be given the option to watch the rest of the game from your killer's eyes (their whole squad's eyes in squad mode). If you're playing in a squad, you'll need to wait until your whole team is dead. If you die to hubris in the red or blue zone, you'll be put in the eyes of whoever's nearest. You won't be able to watch your own death cam then go on to spectate the rest of your killer's round, mind - it's either / or.
Should the person who killed you somehow not be the winning team (but how could anyone other than the very greatest kill you?), the chain of death will let you spectate your killer's killer, then your killer's killer's killer, and onwards. At the very least, it'll be nice to watch people put all that shiny loot I gathered to good use. Maybe they'll find my outfit so fantastic they'll swipe that too.
That update should launch on the main servers in a few days.
As for the new map, the devs explain Codename: Savage is in closed testing for now because it "is still in early development" and "many parts are unfinished". It really is, and they really are.
"That's because we want to get the community involved early to drive development of the map in the right direction. Once we've gotten the map into a better state, we'll run some other, bigger tests."
The first test started on Tuesday and will end on Friday but beta keys are already gone. But while the testing is closed, it isn't private. Here's Twitch Plunkbat superstar "Shroud" playing the test map (he cusses a bit but nothing truly terrible in the bits I've seen?):
And here's "ThesaurusPG" looking at Savage's weather changing over the course of a round:
I was sorry to see Plunkbat remove its weather variants, and I'm certainly up for this.