When Valve announced Couner-Strike 2 and launched its Limited Test, one of the most iconic CS history maps was featured in the trailers—Train. The map has since been missing from the Limited Test and CS2 proper, and fans are wondering where it went.
The discussion has cropped up here and there over the past few months, but a Jan. 14 Reddit thread recently stoked the flames of wonder. The author of the post notes it’s been nearly a year since Valve launched the CS2 limited test and featured Train in one of its trailers, but we haven’t heard anything about the map since.
Train is one of the staple Counter-Strike maps, having featured in each major release since the days of CS 1.6, but it appears that CS2 included Train in its content cull alongside alternate game modes and other maps and features.
In response to the discussion yesterday, players have been poking fun at Valve, comparing them to an indie company, and significant content updates shouldn’t be expected of such a small and low-budgeted team. Indeed, Valve sometimes acts like that, and their silence is often deafening.
Nevertheless, Valve has claimed it aims to polish CS2 and its many systems—most of which are new, such as the sub-tick updates—before adding new content to the game. This does sound rather reasonable, considering the technological leap CS2 has attempted to make. Even so, it doesn’t do fans justice to keep them in the dark, especially regarding iconic and classic elements of CS that are missing from its latest entry.
If you were to ask me, Valve is likely working on an upgraded version of Train for Source 2 in the same vein as the new Inferno. Making a map is easy—you plop down some assets here and there, and you’re done. But making a professionally viable map that also uses up all of your new and flashy engine’s resources takes a bit longer than your usual asset flip. Inferno looks marvelous in CS2 and is an upgrade in every way to its CS:GO version, just like the CS:GO versions were upgrades over previous iterations.
Train is a complex and unorthodox map, and it’ll probably take a while before Valve adds it to the game—but I’m eagerly waiting for its return.
