PUBG’s new map will let you parachute into an underground cave system

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds newest map, called Savage, is a work-in-progress. According to the team at PUBG Corp., they have a very specific vision that will take months to fully assemble. One piece of that vision is an ambitious underground cave system that players will be able to parachute right into.

Fans of the Planet Earth documentary series will recall the dramatic introduction to the fourth episode of its first season, titled “Caves.” In the opening frames, narrator David Attenborough introduces viewers to base jumping, the act of flinging yourself off a high peak with a parachute strapped to your back. It’s just that in this sequence these base jumpers are flinging themselves down the biggest underground cave shaft in the world.

BBC One/Netflix

As the developers at PUBG Corp. discovered on a recent trip, Thailand has its own version of Mexico’s Cave of Swallows. It’s called the Phraya Nakhon Cave, and it’s buried deep inside the Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park. That setting makes it a great fit for Battlegrounds’ Southeast Asian-themed Savage map.

The resulting in-game asset could lead to one of the most spectacular entrances to a multiplayer game ever made.

Using images captured from the team’s recent scouting trip, artists will interpret the Phraya Nakhon Cave to create something entirely unique. The goal is to allow players to drop straight into the mouth of the cave, gear up, and then fight their way out.

This isn’t the first underground section of a Battlegrounds map by any stretch. The game’s original environment, Erangel, featured a system of tunnels in the southeastern portion of the map, but they’re nothing like what’s on the drawing board right now.

PUBG Corp.

The real-life Phraya Nakhon Cave includes a small patch of greenery, including trees and other plants, growing right up out of the limestone. But there’s also a small pavilion, which was erected in 1890 to celebrate the visit by the king of Siam, Chulalongkorn. Since then, the site has become a symbol of Thailand’s Prachuap Khiri Khan Province.

BerryJ

The team at PUBG Corp. are taking the building-inside-a-cave concept and running with it. Expect multi-story structures to be placed underground, all accessible by parachute.

“We drew inspiration from this real life setting and then ultimate [sic] how we thought about ways to make it a fun and unique part of our next map,” PUBG Corp. said in a post on Steam. “We’re excited about it, and we hope you will be too! [...] We have months of work left to do; beyond refining the experience and making changes that impact balance, we also plan to add new vehicles, new weapons, and most exciting in our eyes are the new areas that we think will set this map apart from our first two.”

Expect the new cave system to deploy on to test servers some time in the next few months.