With Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 3, summer has officially arrived in the metaverse. If you thought Epic’s constant shakeups to the Battle Royale meta in Season 2 were wild, just wait ’til you get a load of this update, which adds a major new core gameplay mechanic and introduces a nearly entirely new map in the middle of the chapter. It’s gonna be a lot to process, so let’s dive right in.
A new map in the middle of a chapter??
Apparently so! The new map is called Shattered Coast, and features remixes of Chapter 7’s POIs–so the urban landscape of Battlewood, for example, has been replaced with the forested environs of Battlewoods, complete with a running river. But it’s also the wilderness between towns that benefits from an update like this, because the geography around the island is completely different.
Not every location from the Season 2 map is being remixed into something new, though. The wonderful Wonkeeland is sticking around for Season 3. So there are plenty of familiar features on the new island still.
Sprites
The critters, who we previously spent a lot of time with during Chapter 6, return in Season 3, but with big changes and many new sprite types. The sprites are, in fact, the focus of the gameplay in Season 3, like the Rivalry system was in Season 2. When you collect a sprite, it will grant you an ability based on its type, but you can also bank it at various Extraction sites around the island so you can summon it at the start of a later match. And the more times you extract each type of sprite, the more effective that type will be when you use it in future matches–and you can also level them up by getting kills with one in your inventory.
Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 3 battle pass
The new battle pass includes eight skins, as usual, with one collaboration: a cel-shaded re-do of John Wick, along with his dog as a sidekick. Purchasing the pass will instantly unlock The Guardian, a customizable mech suit driven by a sprite–extracting sprites during rounds of BR will unlock them as style options for this skin. And if you buy the pass during the first week of the season (June 6-12), you’ll also instantly receive the Gold Huntress style of the Dylan skin and her accessories.
Dylan is a strangely noteworthy inclusion, because she appears to be the most scantily clad female skin Fortnite has ever had, something the children are sure to be normal about.
The pass also includes two remixes of existing skins, Heatwave PJ and Vanguard Slone, and a third, The Voidblade, which appears inspired by the item shop skin Focus. Lastly, we’ve got a new rubber duck man called Cluster, and a soldier called Wolfe, who’s likely an old acquaintance of Slone’s from the Imagined Order, judging by his mask.
New weapons and movement in Chapter 7 Season 3
We’re starting Season 3 with four new weapons and one new movement item, including a collaboration gun: John Wick’s Lancehead Pistol, which will let you throw the magazine when it’s empty. The clips of folks winning rounds of Battle Royale using that are going to be awesome.
Beyond that, we’ve also got the long-range Extending Focus Shotgun, the Surgical Burst Rifle, and the Chaos Exploder Rifle, which fires exploding cubes a la Season 2’s Cube Rifle. The new movement is called the Seven Sliders, which let you blast your enemies while dramatically sliding around on your knees, like if you were playing Vanquish on the Xbox 360. That’s a good thing, to be clear.
Coming soon: Extraction mode?
Epic is promising a pretty strange new wrinkle for Battle Royale later in Season 3. Here’s how they explain it: “There will be a small percentage chance that in some matches, the Battle Bus will rift back into the map, and you’ll have a window to board it. Climb on, grapple up, get at least one teammate to the rift out point, and your team secures the Victory. Multiple teams can win this way per match!”
It’s really tough to evaluate whether this is a good idea without seeing it in action, so we’ll reserve judgment. But this idea seems like it might have been inspired by shenanigans players were pulling with the Stick of Truth during the South Park event, when they could choose where the storm circle would close and would frequently choose the most obnoxious places, like the middle of the ocean. But evolving that idea (the circle closes to some inconvenient spot that everyone can see) into an extraction concept with multiple potential winners sounds potentially a lot more palatable.
