Warzone adds famous soldier Snoop Dogg and overhauls Rebirth Island

pcgamer.com:

Call of Duty: Warzone players have strong feelings about many aspects of the game, but perhaps the most fundamental split is over the maps: are you an OG Verdansk operator, or more into Rebirth Island's hectic style of play? That debate will be freshly fuelled with today's major update, running alongside an event called Rebirth Reinforced, that overhauls Rebirth Island's layouts, looks, and adds new elements.

The update comes with a genuinely interesting potted history of the map, which was first seen in Zombies DLC for COD: Black Ops II way back in April 2013. It was then simply called island prison, the theme that persists to this day, before becoming known as Alcatraz and later appearing in Black Ops 4—particularly notable because this was the COD that introduced the battle royale mode Blackout, a dry run at Warzone, which offered Alcatraz as one of the maps.

The history goes into some detail of the map's points of interest and what did and didn't work over various iterations—which dovetails nicely into explaining why the developers have made the changes they have. It gets quite granular but to give one example, the prison courtyard area was always a bit of a deathtrap in Rebirth Island: wide open, no cover, surrounded by vantage points.

This may make sense in terms of how a real prison courtyard is designed, but of course this is a silly shooting game. So now the courtyard's got some cover features and tents within it, a fortified wall with guard stations, and a huge wraparound walkway with multiple levels that connects to a water tower and the prison steps. All of which may seem quite obvious, but I find the problem-solving process interesting and also find it hard to remember what maps used to be like after playing