Fortnite reached its biggest concurrent player count in history this past weekend, surpassing a grand total of six million players across all platforms. OG, a smaller seasonal update that brings back the original map and a number of reworked cosmetics and mechanics, has been seen as a return to form for the battle royale. While it’s never struggled, and continues to pull in billions for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Epic Games, those who grew up with the game obviously feel like much of the magic has vanished in the years since. Now it’♕s back, but h꧑ow long can it really last?

I was just getting started in this line of work back in 2017, and because I hate myself, I’m still here dishing out takes. This meant I was around when Fortnite was little more than a shooter with fun building mechanics and forgettable horde-based combat. All signs pointed to it soon fading away into obscurity, until Epic Games saw the massive success of PUBG and pivoted to a new genre. All of a sudden the game was free, and the only objective was to glide onto an island with a hundred other players in a bid to survive. The r🌱est is history, as Fortnite became one of the biggest pop culture monuments of the 21st century.

Fortnite’s ascension to global stardom came about so quickly, and for an entire generation of younger players it was one of the first games that dominated their lives. They received their first taste of online communities, they learned that a video game isn’t just a toy you play through before discarding, it’s a lifestyle where memories are formed, and huge challenges are conquered with friends by your side. Fortnite was everywhere. Like Minions, Frozen, or Lewis Capaldi songs, there was no escaping it. It became a goldmine for licensed crossovers and fer🐻tile ground for artists to perform and corporations to promote their latest products. I’ll never forget when J.J. Abrams appeared in Fortnite form to give us bad trailers for an even worse Star Wars film. Fortnite is so much more than a video game.

But this shift towards working with major properties and trying to amass profit above all else is a big reason why millions who grew up with it began to walk away. Fortnite is still arguably the biggest game on the planet, but for so many that initial magic faded away and will never be recaptured. A focus on pla💎yer-created stages and convoluted seasonal narratives didn’t help matters either. Fortnite OG feels like Epic Gameꦛs has broken the glass on an emergency alarm designed to deploy nostalgia at the most opportune time.

Now everyone is talking about Fortnite like their dads have finally come home from getting the milk years ago. There’s a warmness to the game (and the milk after how long it took daddy to come home), but the immediacy with which we all lapped up this nostalgia is worrying. For a number of weeks, or at least until news of Chapter 5 becomes official, players can work through a shortened battle pass across a classic vision of Fortnite’s map. Tilted Towers and Retail Row are back, while gameplay is scal♛ed back, so it resembles what we were playing back in 2017. You can’t swim anymore, the only working vehicles are golf carts and shopping trolleys, while mods which instilled a mechanical meta into each match have been discarded in favour of classic building skirmishes and complete accuracy with bullets fired.

It’s refreshing, but one look around the environment reveals an outdated selection of textures and landmarks that are almost entirely square in design, like they were pieced together with generic assets instead of receiving the bespoke touch seen in later chapters. But with rose-tinteꦐd glasses, these shortcomings are soon forgiven.

A brief influx of players celebrating their collective nostalgia might be incredibly lucrative in the short term, but Epic Games has basically pushed the pause button as i🐟t determines its next move. The goal is probably to attract a number of lapsed players and hope they’re able to stick around for what comes next. A more ambitious new chapter in the battle royale that hopes to clean up the muddy narrative waters and keep some vanilla mec﷽hanics around for good measure.

There’s nothing stopping it fro🌠m doing Fortnite OG 2 in the future either, as it reworks older skins and map designs that millions obviously have nostalgia for. This isn’t the runway from Fast and Furious 6 though, and Epic will eventually run out of past victories to rely on. What happens after that will reveal so much about how much fuel Fortnite has left in the tank? Maybe Epic needs to rethink its metaverse ambitions before it’s too late.

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