I'm keen to see what's going on with the new Fortnite update (though most of the major new modes seem to be releasing next week). Part of the reason for the OG season wasn't just nostalgia bait - it seems to have been something of a swan song for the Battle Royale version of Fortnite, and a way of clearing the path to rebranding Fortnite to be more more a Roblox-y set of 'experiences.'
They've been trending this way for a while - Dan Olson did a video on the way Epic wants Fortnite to be a platform way back in 2019. And anyone who's played over the past few months surely noticed how their new UI is much more... Netflix-y.
But their new marketing slogan, "Find it in Fortnite" really brings home the idea that this is a bundle of experiences - an open world Lego survival game, a racing game, a Battle Royale, a place for artists to do digital concerts, user created 'experiences', etc.
Indeed, these don't just seem to be new experiences, but full on games - both Rocket Racers and Lego Fortnite have standalone Twitter accounts and are rated separately by the ESRB (the former is E, the latter is E10+). They're also referred to somewhat confusingly by Epic as "games", "experiences", and "new live-service games." So the boundary between "experience" and "standalone game" isn't quite clear - or, perhaps, a full game is itself viewed as an "experience," a word they'll use to encompass all of the content slurry that will be piped to your eyes via the Fortnite platform.
You can get an idea for how broad the experiences they're pushing are in the big season finale event, which demonstrates not just a flyover of the Lego stuff and a brief interactive bit with the Rocket Racing mechanics, but a Harmonix/Guitar Hero style game during an Eminem concert. None of it involves Battle Royale mechanics like weapons or movement mechanics or new characters, which if anything are downplayed and conspicuously absent for the event.
And I'm curious how this shakes out, because now you have Fortnite (the battle royale known for crossover characters and massive seasonal changes) and Fortnite (the Unreal Engine-powered hardware agnostic experiences platform).
Long term, it's clear Epic want the latter, not the former.
