Friday 'Nite: Fortnite Should Borrow One Vital Feature From The Halo Infinite Battle Pass

gamespot.com:

Friday 'Nite is a weekly Fortnite column in which Mark Delaney takes a closer look at current events in the wide world of Fortnite, with a special emphasis on the game's plot, characters, and lore.

Fortnite is often credited with revolutionizing the free-to-play gaming world. After randomized lootboxes in other games were trounced by players and investigated by government bodies, creators quickly pivoted, sensing a need to monetize their games that was fairer to players. Led by Fortnite, they landed on the battle pass, a system that, while not everyone's favorite, is still much preferred by seemingly everyone as compared to the lottery-like lootboxes of a few years ago. Personally, I think Fortnite's battle pass is the best in the medium: eight character each season, tons of other cosmetics, plus you can earn back all your V-Bucks just by playing the game you probably already intend to play anyway.

However, the Fortnite battle pass still suffers from one major flaw: Some of the game's most important heroes and villains in its years-long story have been made unavailable forever for a great number of players. While they're active, the Fortnite battle passes are a reasonable and fun tool to keep players engaged in a season. But for players who came to Fortnite late, or perhaps haven't even come to the game at all yet, keeping super-important characters locked forever behind arbitrary walls sure does sting.

I started playing Fortnite regularly with Chapter 2, Season 2. Before that, I had dabbled in it, but it didn't really catch my attention until 2020 when my son and I played in the early days of the pandemic. As I played, I started to uncover the story that was being told beneath the surface of a game that, to an outsider,