For reasons that elude me, Epic is only running Fortnite’s OG Chapter 1 rewind season for a month until the game moves on to the “real” Chapter 5, and with it, a brand new map.
But now, thanks to new leaks within the uploaded game files for the new (old) season, we may have a look at what the new map is going to look like, which some are comparing to the season 2 map. Here’s the full thing below, which is labeled in the game as “HELIOS_TERRAIN.”
For comparison, this is the Chapter 2 map that it’s being compared to.
Mmm I can sort of see it., You have rivers meeting in the middle to form a body of water with an island. You have a city type zone to the south east of the that, you have snowy mountains in the south. But I don’t know, I’m not sure if all that adds up to it being directly inspired by the Chapter 2 map, as I think it’s probably just meant to be its own thing, and as ever, will evolve over time as all Chapter maps do.
Right now it looks a little spread out and with not all that many biomes, but again, these things tend to change in time. The question now is what happens at the end of the month from a story perspective in order to change from the OG map to the new Chapter 5 map here, and will players be as engaged once all their favorite landmarks, gear and vehicles go away, which is presumably what’s going to happen? Fortnite has seen its playercount absolutely skyrocket to over 6 million concurrents in the wake of the release of the OG Chapter 1, and I believe that’s going to tank hard once that map goes away and the game is simply shuffling forward once again toward new chapters. This feels like a card you can only play once, so it have it only around for a month seems a bit misguided.
So no, for now, this doesn’t seem like the most interesting map in the world, but I do get echoes of Fortnite’s early, more spread-out, less gimmicky maps, given what we’re being shown here. Again, it will evolve in time, but I wonder if we are going back to the days of very specific live events changing very specific areas of the map like the famed meteor strike of old. I think it’s possible.
Follow me on Twitter, Threads, YouTube, and Instagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.