Team
supremejust over a day later, Fortnite Chapter
Two went live with an absolute banger
of a new map.
Exploring the new world is a
pleasure. Well, at least when you’re
not bent over in excruciating pain
following a couple of combat shotgun
shells to the bowels. Comprised
of 13 named locations, it’s a more
varied map than the previous island.
Spanning snow-capped mountains,
a nuclear power plant that ventsbright purple vapours, or an old-timey
drive-through cinema that looks like it
has been plucked straight out of the
’50s, Fortnite’s new archipelago is a
hoot to shoot and scurry around. It’s
also comforting to see Epic hasn’t lost
its love for alliteration. Sweaty Sands!
Steamy Stacks! Frenzy Farm! Slurpy
Swamp! Dirty Docks! Mercifully, that
last one isn’t as lewd as it sounds.
This new Chapter of Fortnite also
ushers in some key tweaks. Water
plays a bigger role than ever before,
with reworked swimming and theability to fish and take control of
missile-flinging motorboats. For
cowardly players, there’s also the
option to listen to your yellow belly
by hiding in new haystacks and
dumpsters. The levelling system also
feels a little less grindy, with more
regular rewards and generous wads
of XP being spit out for offing fellow
survivors/outlasting other players.
Oh, and there’s also the new bandage
bazooka for those times you have to
blast your squadmates with some TLC.
Fornite’s Battle Pass returns for
the new Chapter, with 100 tiers you
can either buy or earn by completing
challenges. The key change? Battle
Stars have now been ditched for plain
old XP and a straightforward levelling
system. Seeing as we’ve already won
our second match – amazing, we
know! – we’re surprisingly geared up
for the shooty survival grind. QFortnite maps
out its future
Battle Royale goes dark then blasts back with a
new island to mark the start of its fresh Chapter
THE
PROMISED
LANDTalk about a
brave new world.
Epic’s free-to-
play phenomenon
Fortnite has
ditched its
original map and
introduced a completely fresh island
to celebrate the arrival of its second
‘Chapter’. The studio also closed
the curtains on its first world with a
cheeky sense of spectacle.
This might be the first instance
of a developer turning server
maintenance into a bona fide event
Xbox gamers could get excited about.
Epic didn’t so much send Fortnite’s
first Chapter out with a bang as it
did a black hole. Literally. The first
island was sucked into a rip in the
space-time continuum, swallowed
into an inky void that initially sent
Fortnite fans into a panicked frenzy.
Even the game’s Xbox Store icon was
blacked out during the intergalactic
maintenance period.
Holed over
With the game going dark (literally)
for over 24 hours, fans didn’t know
what to think, which kickstarted a
brief time of frantic speculation. Had
the world’s most popular videogame
crashed out of nowhere? Did Epic
suddenly decide it didn’t like money
and decided to ditch its battle royale
in the worst business decision of all
time? Thankfully, the black hole was
just a sly piece of showmanship, and
Skydiving onto the
new island as part of
a squad rewards
tighter teamwork like
never before. New
squad-focused
features in Chapter
Two include the
ability to carry your
fallen allies to safety
for a quick bandage
should a rival survivor
down them in battle.
Carrying on this more
caring and sharing
vibe, there are now
group emotes you
can break out, too,
like high fives and
other cheerfully
cartoony team taunts.INSIDER FORTNITE CHAPTER 2
“The first island
was sucked into
a rip in the
space-time
continuum”
ABOVE The first
time you boot up
Chapter 2, you’re
greeted by a
neat new intro.
RIGHT The new
island is so
good we’ve all
but forgotten
the original.EXCITED? HORRIFIED? LET THE WORLD KNOW AT WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/OXMUK
010 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE