Long time listeners and readers who know me, know that I have never been the biggest fan of Fortnite. When the battle royale craze kicked off, I was a dedicated PUBG player. When people were earning big bucks in Dusty Depot, I was perfecting my drops on Erangel. Among people my age, Fortnite was the kid’s version of games like PUBG, Rust, and H1Z1. And yet, whereas those games have dropped off in popularity, Fortnite remains strong. So as season 3 of Fortnite: Chapter Two went live this week, I found myself wondering if this might be the one that gets me to buy-in. So let’s dive in!
What are all these chapters and seasons stuff?
If you’re like me, you grew up in simpler times. Games came out and that’s just what they were. Sure, sometimes if the game got another print run, they might fix some bugs. However, games were pretty much what they were when they released. Gone are those days. Very few games released today in what we would call their final state. Games release with content updates already scheduled. Some even have the gall to charge you in advance for these content patches.
Fortnite is broken up into chapters and seasons. The launch of the second chapter was last year and coincided with the black hole event. You may recall your kids freaking out as the game disappeared into a black hole and was offline for a few days. I know, the horror of it all. When the game returned, it had a very different map, new mechanics, and a ton of quality of life improvements. However, seismic events aren’t the only thing that changes the landscape of Fortnite.
Throughout the chapter, various seasons will happen that introduce new content to the game as well. The seasons are generally free, as Fortnite makes its money off in-game items you can buy. Again, I’m sure that won’t come as news to any of the parents out there. The newest season was delayed for quite a while due to COVID-19, however, it finally released this week and has reinvigorated a lot of interest in the game.
What’s new in Season 3?
While seasons patches aren’t typically small, Season 3 is an abnormally large one. This may be partially due to the ongoing pandemic, but I’d wager the major changes required a lot of extra development time anyway. By far the largest change is to the geography of the map. Players have watched over the last few weeks as a giant wall of water formed around the map. Well, with the release of season 3, that wall has come tumbling down.
The end result is a world flooded with water. What once was a massive island, is now an archipelago. But what water-world would be complete without some references to Waterworld? There’s now a massive floating city reminiscent of the Kevin Costner movie. That doesn’t do it for ya? How about the new ability to go water-skiing? No? What if you were water-skiing while being pulled by sharks?!
Obviously, boats are more valuable now than they’ve ever been. And Epic has confirmed that actual cars will be coming to the game later this year. This season also has a cross-over with Aquaman. If you buy the battle pass, you’ll be able to unlock Aquaman as a playable character.
So am I in?
And here’s where I struggle. I respect Epic a lot. They have absolutely no fear of making their game ridiculous. Whereas too many games these days are so up their own ass, that they would never take a chance, Epic laughs and does whatever they want. Now, part of that is because they could afford to give every employee at the company their very own Scrooge McDuck money vault. There’s a degree of artistic freedom that you have to respect.
But just because I respect it, doesn’t mean I enjoy it. I’m sorry, but for me, the game just isn’t fun. I don’t enjoy wandering the map until I find someone, then watching a giant K’nex tower explode out of them seconds before dying. Fortnite Season 3 continues to add insane mechanics to their battle royale game like water-skiing. But for me, I just want some more classic elements. I’m starting to worry that I’m reaching ‘old woman yells at cloud’ status. Maybe I’m just too old for Fortnite. That is depressing to say at 30.
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