For several years now,Fortnitehas stood tall as a pillar of the battle royale community. This game has helped make streamers like Ninja famous, while inspiring several other developers to get in on the mounting battle royale craze. Even though it’s nearly five years old,Fortniteremains highly popular thanks to Epic Games' constant innovations and additions, as well as its central mechanic: building. The player’s ability to whip up platforms and protective structures at a moment’s notice is crucial toFortnitestrategy, so it’s strange to think thatFortniteplayers can’t actually build right now. The mechanic is temporarily unavailable.
Fortniteis naturally very different without building, and it has led some fans to compare the game to other popular BRs, sorting out what else makes the game mechanically distinct from other games. At this point in their mutual lives, BRs have borrowed a lot from one another, so there’s certainly a case to be made thatFortnitefeels far less distinct without building. Still, there’s a crucial part of the game’s aesthetic that makes it unique.Fortniteis filled to the brim with crossover cosmetics, and it keeps gaining new ones. The IP’s nature as a relatively blank slate makes it uniquely good at interacting with any franchise that Epic Games wants.
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Fortnite’s Unique Cosmetic Range
Fortniteis different from many other battle royales in that it isn’t built on a longstanding foundation of lore. For instance,Apex Legendsis a spinoff ofRespawn’sTitanfallFPS franchise, meaning there’s lots of worldbuilding details thatApex Legendsplayers will probably miss if they’re not familiar withTitanfall.Fortnitedoes have its own lore these days, but lore wasn’t crucial to the game’s battle royale mode from the start. Since the sibling gameFortnite: Save the Worldproved far less popular than the BR mode, storytelling is an additional feature, rather than a part ofFortniteBattle Royale’s core. That means that Epic Games' BR is highly malleable.
Epic Games has capitalized on that malleability to a huge extent. Plenty of BRs have crossover content in their cosmetics, but nothing reaches quite as far asFortnite.Everything fromJohn WicktoStar WarstoRick and Mortyhas cosmetic representation inFortnite,to name only a few, and there’s a notable number of real people who are playable inFortnitethrough cosmetics, includingOlympic gold-medalist snowboarder Chloe Kim. The vast variety of IPs that mix together inFortniteadd up to a wildly colorful, diverse aesthetic that celebrates the length and breadth of pop culture in a way that no other BR can.
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The Distinguishing Factors of Fortnite
Of course, this doesn’t mean thatFortniteis sufficiently unique without building. Every player’s ability to improvise advantageous terrain adds up to gunfights that simply can’t be replicated in most other battle royales.Fortnite Battle Royalemay not be built on a dense foundation of lore, butbuilding is a part ofFortnite’s DNA. Crossover cosmetics makeFortniteaesthetically distinct, but building is what makesFortnitemechanically distinct. These two features compliment one another and make up the basic elements of theFortniteexperience.
Hopefully these two sides ofFortnitewill be reunited in the near future. Epic Games probably doesn’t intend to keep building out ofFortniteforever; the current event is just an experiment. It’s definitely good to see that Epic Games is willing totry some surprising things withFortnite,even in the comfort of the game’s overwhelming success. Epic Games should keep up that level of creativity, both when it’s planning mechanical innovations forFortniteand when it’s looking for new IPs to intersect with. Building and crossover cosmetics defineFortnite,so future updates ought to keep finding new ways to surprise players in both departments.
Fortniteis available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
