Blizzard invites 'Overwatch' players to explore Australia's Junkertown

Blizzard officially unveiled the next piece of content set to be added to its enormous popular hero-based shooter, Overwatch. Junkertown is a map for the escort game type that is themed around everyone’s favorite society of lawless Australians.

In Overwatch lore, the Junkers are a savage society of people displaced into the irradiated outback after Australia’s supply of omnium was destroyed. Two members of the game’s cast — Junkrat and Roadhog — are Junkers, and Junkertown is the home base for this deranged and deadly group.

We learn a little bit more about Junkrat and Roadhog’s relationship with Junkertown in a short called The Plan that was released by Blizzard alongside the reveal of the map — namely, why they are not living there at the moment. The pair were exiled from Junkertown by its queen, having committed several crimes worthy of expulsion. We can perhaps assume that it is the queen that is speaking in the Junkertown reveal trailer.

Junkrat and Roadhog set about on a worldwide spree of heists, taking their bounty back to Junkertown in the hopes of using it to double-cross the queen and gain some measure of revenge. Unfortunately, despite Junkrat’s best efforts to perfect their plan ahead of time, there are a few hitches that get in the way.

Shorts like this one really help flesh out the world of Overwatch and Blizzard has been doing a great job of making both the setting and the characters that live in it seem full of life and history. For a multiplayer-only title, the studio has been able to tell plenty of bite-sized stories, a strategy that obviously owes a debt to Valve’s work on Team Fortress 2.

Of course, the big news for players is the fact that another map is being added to the game, bringing the current total up to 20. Response to the last map to be released — Horizon Lunar Colony, which made its debut in June 2017 — has been decidedly mixed, but there seem to be enough interesting elements like moving platforms and alternate routes to make Junkertown a hit. Plus, there is certainly room for more escort maps in the game.