Fortnite Battle Royale is the world's most popular video game. This battle royale giant may be the defining game for this generation, having opened the door to a massive number of open-world and battle royale games. It has released countless crossover costumes and events, and even developed into its own sequel in the form of Fortnite Chapter 2. The game has been released on almost every platform and has secured crossplay across most of them. Fortnite, and Epic Games, has done an incredible amount of work in developing the live service game to beat. It does all this with no entry fee, and it even has a second game, Fortnite: Save the World, available for players more interested in a cooperative experience.
With all that said, that second Fortnite game (which was the original Fortnite before the battle royale mode took off) really leaves something to be desired. It would be nice if the Fortnite universe could get another game. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is already pursuing this with a couple of other games in its universe, and Apex Legends is a sequel to Titanfall. Fortnite could make major waves if it came out with a new game that had elements of the original but in a whole new genre. To that end, Fortnite should follow through with recent leaks and pursue an open-world sandbox RPG.
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Fortnite is an ideal setting for an RPG. The world is fraught with dangers, whether they be the zombies dropping from the stormclouds in Save the World, or the interdimensional mayhem of Battle Royale. The setting isn’t short of monsters or events; basically, anything can happen at any given time. There are also plenty of smaller settings within the world like Loot Lake, Tilted Towers, and Tomato Town that could be expanded to make for interesting areas in an RPG. Even if this hypothetical Fortnite game was just an adaptation of the various seasons in Fortnite Chapter 1, it would still take players on what would feel like a globe-trotting adventure, with plenty of world-altering arcs and things to do.
That’s the magic of a Fortnite RPG: all the elements one would need to build it are already in Fortnite or have been at some point in the past. There’s a roster of named characters like Jonesy and Peely who have been around throughout the game’s life, there are villains like the Ice King and the Visitor, and Chapter 2 even added scattered NPCs, monsters, bosses, and limited singleplayer content. All Epic Games would need to do is add some additional story elements as connective tissue between the major setpieces in early Chapter 1, introduce a solid cast earlier in the story, expand the various sections of the Battle Royale map to allow for more content, and add in a variety of enemies to various parts of the map. Thanks to the story-centric direction Epic Games has been pushing the game, many of these ideas just work.
At that point, all that’s left is to decide what sort of RPG this new Fortnite game would be. Some permutation of action is an obvious choice, given Fortnite’s existing propensity for vehicles, guns, and base-building. Speaking of which, a hard choice may need to be made regarding said base building in a mode where it may not be as necessary. It’s part of what makes Fortnite what it is, but it should probably be removed or limited in some way to keep the game’s power balance from shifting too far in the player’s favor.
Leaks suggest that traditional fantasy roles could be used in this alternate mode, so whether or not the usual guns will apply is unclear. Regardless, the idea of an open-world Fortnite RPG, even if it’s just a new mode, is an exciting one for sure. Exploring the map to find secrets is already a ton of fun in Fortnite proper, so it can only get better here. Epic Games would truly have something special on its hands if it repurposes the years of old Fortnite content in a brand new Fortnite title.
Fortnite is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and mobile devices.
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