This weekend’s big Chapter 3 launch – mere hours after Chapter 2’s explosive finale – brought with it a brand new map bustling with fresh places to visit, several fan-favourite locations from the game’s original map, and plenty of fun Easter eggs and secrets.
There’s loads to explore already, but beyond launch there’s already a lot more on the way. Next week will bring Spider-Man’s web-shooters to the game as a way to swing around. An upcoming crossover for Gears of War will also see Marcus Fenix and Kait Diaz come to the Island.
Searching around the new Island, there are hints at future map changes. Currently, half of the map is covered in snow – but this is expected to recede over the back half of this season in the new year. When that happens, players expect a certain familiar clump of frozen rooftops to emerge from the ice – you can find them now just to the left of the new Island’s centre.
These rooftops are, unmistakably, the frozen tops of Tilted Towers – Fortnite’s most popular (and some would say over-used) location from its first map. The location was so busy, to the detriment of other areas, Epic eventually made sure it was spectacularly flattened by a volcanic eruption.
For now, it’s worth fully exploring Sanctuary, the large area spread over the archipelago to the east of the map. This is the home of The Seven – the game’s previously mysterious group who only showed up when really big plot moments happened.
With their heavy involvement in the Chapter 2 finale and now this reveal of where they live, there’s been a definite bid to de-mystify The Seven’s presence in Fortnite’s storyline. Now you can poke around The Rock, sorry, The Foundation’s house, for example.
It’s in Sanctuary where you’ll find voiced quests and a couple of hidden voice logs from The Scientist (who sounds a lot like Joel McHale) detailing a split between the three Seven members seen in the Chapter 2 finale and the other member who has been glimpsed previously. In short, The Paradigm is off somewhere else, separate to the Visitor, Scientist and Foundation.
Fans who have delved into Fortnite’s files have found spoilery hints to the other three Seven members. There’s reference to one named “The Origin”, who perhaps was the first member of the group. More intriguingly, the remaining two are referenced as “The Sisters”. Fortnite fans who have been paying attention will have heard of these before, back when The Foundation first popped up during the Zero Crisis Finale. At the time, he said he was looking for them, as well as the mysterious “Geno”.
Clearly, the Seven are not the unified force seen at the end of Chapter 1, when all of them turned up simultaneously to usher in the game’s black hole. Perhaps Chapter 3 will be about reuniting the group again, before they take on the villainous Imagined Order?
