SALT LAKE CITY — “Fortnite” announced major changes for its ninth season, which debuted on Thursday, and it includes a switch to one of the game’s most popular maps.
What happened: Epic Games released a trailer for the new season, which shows the map’s major city Tilted Towers destroyed and replaced with a new cityscape called Neo Tilted. Similarly, Retail Row has become Mega Mall. These Neo Tilted structures will be available in the creative mode, too.
- Smaller changes to the map include a power plant around the game’s volcano, a new banana stand and “drone-like hovering platforms,” The Verge reports.
- The new season adds a form of transportation called “slipstream,” which acts like a wind tunnel that will move gamers from one spot on the map to another.
- Interestingly, Epic Games announced in patch notes will add a new “combat shotgun” but it will drop the treasure maps, balloons and a number of weapons that have existed for some time in the game.
Battle pass: And yes, the new season will have a battle pass, which will include a number of unlockable items, including “a Gundam-style suit and a robot cat.”
- There’s also a new thing called “fortbytes.” You can collect 100 of them to complete challenges and unlock new things in season nine.
LTM: New limited-time modes include a three-person squad game called “trios,” a new “solid-gold” game where all the weapons and items are goal, and “one-shot,” which is a sniper-only fight, according to TechCrunch.