After an explosive finale on Sunday, Fortnite has finally returned from the void with new life.
Creating headlines across the world, Fortnite did something no other game has ever done intentionally before: They shut off their game completely. As the big send off to Fortnite’s Season 10, Epic organized a huge event known as “The End” this past weekend, which effectively destroyed the Fortnite world as we know it. Boy, was it quite the spectacle too.
Thousands of players gathered to see the final moments as the rocket launched from Dusty Depot into the air, cracking the sky box and causing a chain reaction of destruction throughout the battle royale island. The light show culminated with a gigantic explosion that enveloped players, the map, and the battle bus, leaving nothing left but a black hole in its wake. And it remained until eventually the servers went offline. Epic changed all of their social media channels to the infamous black hole image, as well as live streamed the mysterious portal until eventually the portal awakened into the reveal trailer for Fortnite’s biggest update yet, “Chapter 2.”
As of Tuesday, Fortnite has become playable again with a host of new additions, most notably a completely revamped world map. While being within a similar size to the original Fortnite island, the Chapter 2 map has a bit more variety in its environment design. Some old spots, like Salty Springs and Pleasant Park, are returning.
There are new iconic locations like Power Plant and Weeping Woods, as well as an emphasis in landscape diversity such as swamp and winter biomes as well as larger bodies of water. That also brings us to a new functionality; you can actually swim in Fortnite. Many of the rivers that flow through the map are now too deep to run through, forcing you to swim across. You can also gracefully launch and dive in the water like a dolphin. But if you’re lucky enough, the newest vehicles available are battle boats, large enough to carry up to a whole squad.
Weapons have also been refined and streamlined in Chapter 2 as well. The loot pool for weapons/items has been brought back down to the basic equipment mostly found in the base game. You also now have the ability to upgrade a weapon’s rarity level through workbenches scattered throughout the game world.
There’s quite a few quality of life changes made to the game as well. For one thing, the UI has been updated to reflect a style similar to the game’s art style. Challenges and XP have also been reworked to account for “less grind” during the season, meaning players can progress through normal challenge progression as well as earn medals for various activities in-game (kills, opening chests, discovering locations, secrets, etc.). The max Battle Pass season level cap has been extended to 250.
Also a nice touch is that there’s continuous matchmaking now, meaning you don’t have to go back to the lobby every time you finish a game. Now squads can opt-in to continue straight into another match after a death/victory.
Interestingly enough, this update has been the only Fortnite update that doesn’t have any patch notes publicly available. Now granted many have reported that this could be on purpose due to any secrets/features that they want players to discover, but that could easily just be conjecture. Still, it is odd that they wouldn’t even add bare minimum patch notes and just omit certain secrets they don’t want players to know.
Fortnite’s meta-narrative has always been around in more subtle ways, with similar events occurring throughout the year. From giant robots fist-fighting to a full on Marhmello concert to a crack in the space-time continuum, there have been a variety of live events that occur outside of the typical gameplay loop that showcase some kind of spectacle.
There have been audio logs and other tidbits referring to a subtext of time travel/manipulation, but it seems that all came to a head with the original battle royale island literally exploding out of existence. Talk about a hard reset.
