Call of Duty: Black Ops 3’s new map looks like Endor

As part of the first of Treyarch's "Black Ops Fridays" — a series that will reveal new content for the studio's upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 game every week leading up to its launch — we got our first look at the brand new map, Redwood.

As the name suggests, this "medium-sized" map is set in the Redwoods of Northern California. "It's very different from any other map that we have in the game or that we've done in the past," explained Treyarch's Dan Bunting. The map is said to exist "a little bit outside of some of the core fiction of our game, but it lives inside the universe."

Parts of the map were shown off during the livestream, revealing a military placement with skybridges that connect between different trees. "It's a very picturesque, serene setting for the mayhem that happens in war," Bunting said of the Redwood map.

The first thing that comes to my mind when looking at the new map is the forest moon of Endor from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, which makes sense because that was actually filmed in the Redwood National Park.

Looks aside though, Redwood is said to be "one of the most balanced maps" for Black Ops 3's new chain-based movement system.

"In terms of map development goes from a production point of view, this came fairly late in the development cycle. It was the last map that was made, and that lets you make and develop the core movement system in the context of your best understanding of how to do so with all the experience in everything to that point," explained Treyarch studio designer David Vonderhaar.

"We had the benefit of having the maturity of the entire development process to really master our understanding of how to design spaces for movement," added Bunting. "It has a really broad range. Some of the core principals we have — we always want to have these really strong destinations in the map that players want to fight over — and this map has three to four dominant positions around the map that are spread out in a good way. All of the navigation between them has a lot of diversity, both in visual aesthetic and gameplay. It's just a lot of fun."

Bunting also teased that there's one area in the map for those who master Black Ops 3's movement system to gain a really advantageous point of position. All it requires you to do is flawlessly execute a wall run to a double jump to another wall run to another double jump. Simple, right?

Stay tuned as today's livestream also promises the reveal of Black Ops 3's 9th Specialist, but in the meantime take a brief tour of the Redwood map in the gallery below.