Fortnite Is A Different Game Every Time I Play It

thegamer.com:

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously said, "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." That's sort of how I feel about Fortnite.

This weekend, I started playing Epic Games’ battle royale again. Since the last time I played, Epic has added:

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Outside of a brief excursion back into the game for the virtual Travis Scott concert in 2020, the last time I played the world-beating battle royale was back in 2018 around the time Epic added fighter planes. It was very cool then. I spent most of my time beelining it for the hangars so I could grab a plane and dogfight until I inevitably bit the dust. I also remember there being a big snow castle. Looking through the skins that I have available, I also see a viking woman, which reminds me of another time I checked in for a few weeks — earlier that year when Epic added rifts, the shining violet black holes which you can jump in to get shot up into the sky — and a Viking longship beached at the top of a waterfall.

Obviously, four years is a long time to step away from a game. But, I'm struck by the extent to which Fortnite is and is not recognizably the same game I was playing in 2018. That year was early on in Fortnite's cultural dominance, before Christopher Nolan and J.J. Abrams screened trailers in the game, before Marshmello held a virtual concert, before the game had Zendaya skins from two separate movies. In my mind, as I've spent years away from Fortnite, it became easy to dismiss the game as a dump for cultural detritus, a place where all IP were welcome as sticky wads on a Katamari Damacy-style ball of corporate branding.

But, then I came