Deadlock celebrated this Halloween with a small patch that added a few fun items and reworked one building into something beautiful. It’s actually the first seasonal event that Deadlock has done anything for since its release into closed beta, but if you forgot to log in during Halloween, don’t worry; it’s still active even if the spooky holiday is over.
It’s pretty hard to miss the Halloween decorations in Deadlock. While the jack-o-lanterns are quite small, they are scattered absolutely everywhere across the map and stand out, especially because many of them have replaced urns and golden jars, which players love to destroy and ransack. But the pumpkins aren’t the best part of this Halloween patch, even if they do look creepy.
One of my favourite new additions is all the new Halloween-themed masks that were added. So far, I’ve seen a clown, Frankenstein’s monster, a jack-o-lantern, and a vampire. It seems like heroes get random masks every game, but for some reason, Vindicta almost always gets the clown mask (I’m not sure if that’s a dig at her character or just a coincidental read on how I usually play her).
Most players actually seem to think that Vindicta suits the clown mask because of how much of a joke she is. “She’s a tryhard character like Widowmaker from Overwatch,” one player says. “She’s bad at taking objectives ’cause she doesn’t do a lot of damage to them. She’s annoying to lane against because she can insta kill you once you’re at half [health]. A lot of people play her and are bad with her, AND her win rate is low. So it’s like rolling the dice with one on your team.” All of that was coming from a self-proclaimed Vindicta one-trick, and honestly, after reading it, I kind of get the clown comparison now, as much as I hate to admit it.
Other than some seasonal trees and new sounds being added in this patch, the final, most exciting addition is a redesign of the Baroness Hotel. This building sits next to Greenwich Street (Green Lane) and, for a long time, just faded into the background. But now it’s really a standout building, especially for players jumping into Deadlock for the first time after this patch.
On the outside, the hotel is now engulfed in ivy climbing up its stone walls, and it also has a brand new roof, complete with spires that raise the height of the building and will likely make it harder to traverse. However, some of the greatest reworks have been done to this building’s interior. Before, the rooms (like most other internal spaces in Deadlock) were dark, grey, and lifeless, but now there are newly tiled floors, lanterns, windows, and some furniture.
It may not feel like anything huge or impressive, but these little changes to structural designs are actually really exciting. Back when Deadlock was first officially announced, we got to see some concept art of what Valve wanted the map to look like eventually, and cool doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Deadlock is set in an occult version of New York, but apart from some typography and hero designs, you can’t really tell that from just looking at the map. But this map concept art shows off the potential for a truly witchy yet stunning map, which I really hope Valve is able to realise one day, even if it happens one building at a time.
