I shared the image above with some co-workers at Kotaku and asked them what game they thought it was. The most popular answer was Call of Duty. And that’s totally fair. It looks like a new Call of Duty game, maybe a mobile port of one. But nope. The screenshot above is from Fortnite.
The above screenshot isn’t from a fan-made mod or some weird hack involving a camera trick or exploit. Instead, it’s from a new post from Epic showcasing an experimental FPS module that creators can now use in UEFN to create new maps and games in first person. Watch out Call of Duty, Fortnite is coming for you next!
As seen in an October 1 blog post, Epic Games is moving closer to adding a proper first-person option to Fortnite. We’ve known for some time now, thanks to dataminers and rumors, that Epic has been working on a first-person mode for its popular battle royale game. But this is the first official look at what the studio has been developing. Before this, the only way to get an FPS option in fan-made Fortnite maps was to use crude workarounds or camera hacks that never felt great and were prone to bugs and glitches. Epic even acknowledged these workarounds in the blog post, opening it with: “Workarounds, begone.”
While an official FPS-like mode isn’t in the game yet, Epic’s new experimental tool lets us see what might be possible in the future. The module is now a part of the Fortnite-powered Unreal Engine editor known as UEFN. And the results look pretty good! I think most people would be fooled into thinking this was anything but Fortnite.
Now, this new module is still being built and tested, so Epic isn’t letting people publish maps with the FPS module included just yet. And not all weapons work perfectly with it and there are some graphical issues, too. But even in this rough state, it looks solid.
I bet it won’t be too long from now that Epic is offering up an FPS battle royale mode in Fortnite. And I’m excited to see what UEFN devs can whip up with the module once Epic improves it and lets players publish FPS games and maps. Fortnite is already like 200 different games. Now it might become even more. Wild to think about.
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