Creators will also soon be able to use in-game trading, proximity chat and a full physics sandbox in their custom modes
Fortnite, one of the biggest third-person shooters in, well, ever, could be about to become one of the biggest first-person shooters ever. Epic have revealed that a first-person camera mode is headed to their ridiculously popular battle royale game later in 2024, letting you blast Peter Griffin, Solid Snake’s flat butt and other pop-culture icons up-close.
Fortnite’s incoming first-person mode was teased during this week’s State of Unreal event, revealed as part of a public roadmap for the creator-focused Unreal Editor for Fortnite, used to build the game’s many custom modes and levels outside of its battle royale and survival modes. (Epic also dropped the stat that over 80,000 UEFN experiences have been released to date, and played by over 130 million people – that’s quite a few.)
A snippet of gameplay showed the player, indeed, aiming their weapon in first-person, with a notably different perspective to the game’s existing aim-down-sights options. Epic acknowledged that a first-person mode had been “highly requested”, adding after the reveal: “It took a while, you know.”
It’s important to note that this doesn’t mean that the standard Fortnite battle royale mode will be playable in full first-person – at least as far as we know right now – but that creators will be able to either force players to play in first-person or give them the option to do so in custom maps and modes. That may well spill over to the core modes, but that remains to be confirmed for sure.
Other things on the way to UEFN include the ability to use Fall Guys’ beans in custom obstacle courses and a custom track editor for racing mode Rocket Racing, along with the ability to have in-game trading, Lethal Company-like proximity chat, create Lego minigames based on the game’s recent Lego modes – with three new Lego Islands already in the game, including a Prop Hunt mode – and a physics sandbox with destructible environments. UEFN has also added support for photorealistic digital human-maker MetaHuman, which could be used to make realistic-looking levels and characters in the future.
Elsewhere during the State of Unreal event, the publishers finally gave us a proper look at Uncharted director Amy Hennig’s superhero game, Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, which is definitely putting some of that graphical engine power to work.