Chapter 2 Season 6 of Fortnite Battle Royale began with a boom. It is the first season to not end, but start with a spectacular story event. It was the first time that the story event wasn't an online event of Millions of players simultaneously engaging in it (which has in the past of lead to server problems and many players being left out of these events), but an offline event, that players could participate in during the first week of Chapter 2 Season 6.
The story of the previous season lead to the Zero Point nearly exploding and Jonesy quitting his job at the Imaginary Order (IO) to save it with the help of the Seven. In the Zero Crisis Final Event Jonesy managed to summon the Foundation (leader of the Seven) and convinced him to help. The players now join them and try to stabilize the Zero Point by closing time portals via Jonesy's Portal device. With every closed portal the skin of the players changed, highlighting the new Battle Pass skins. At the end the mission is successful, but the Foundation has to seal himself with the Zero Point inside of a dome to prevent the blast from destroying the Fortnite world. Jonesy gets sucked into the Loop and becomes a regular Battle Royale character in the process.
This Zero Crisis Final Event was pretty cool and even though it lacked the collective aspect of online events, it allowed all players to participate regardless of internet connection or luck. It was a good way of intensifying the storyline. The theme of the new season was 'Primal'. As a consequence of the Zero Point nearly exploding and being sealed off, reality waves escaped and changed the middle part of the map. The beautiful crystal desert from the previous season unfortunately completely vanished and was replaced with the new primal biome, which has a very autumnal look. This autumnal look (orange trees and grass) covered not only the middle of the map, but also reached with a star like form in 6 different directions (also covering the places which were formerly known as Salty Towers and Colossal Coliseum). At the end of each of this autumnal lines there were 6 smaller spire like towers. The houses surroundings these places resembled those of the buildings at the new Spire POI in the middle of the map (replacing the former Zero Point location).
The big new center POI was indeed called 'The Spire'. Its main attraction was a gigantic tower (which reminded me of the Orthanc in Isengard) with circular stairs aside which lead to the top, containing the sealed off Zero Point. Aside this tower there was a large village attached to it, which consisted of many buildings (mostly stone buildings in contrast to the wood buildings at the other Primal locations) with a really high amount of loot (50 chests!). I was honestly pretty surprised to never meet more than 1 or 2 Squads, when landing or passing through the Spire. There are also many ziplines attached to the Spire tower, which made it easy to get to the high point and quickly pass through the location.
Salty Towers got replaced to be Boney Burbs, which is the primal version of this location. Most buildings possess the same shape, but are built by more primitive material (much more wood and planks). Some buildings however also look more destroyed (or not finished yet?) and some concrete buildings were replaced by barns or smaller huts. The whole location has a primal village look.
Colossal Coliseum also got massively changed to become Colossal Crops. The Coliseum had nearly completely vanished and only some few foundation walls were left standing. Instead the place consisted of new corn fields, a hog house and a couple of barns and huts. There is only one larger building, which was the home of the new character Raz (There was also a large statue of a gladiator with a dinosaur helmet, but which apparently had no further meaning for the story).
The other big map changes were the already mentioned spread of the primal biome across the map and the creation of these 6 new Spire like towers. Locations from the previous season like Kit's Catina or Butter Barn vanished without replacement. The POI Hunters Haven got replaced by the severely reduced non-POI location Primal Pond, which is just one middle sized hut building.
The only Map Changes during the season consisted of a new island named Isla Nublada south of Flush Factory. The island includes the ruins of a castle with the Character Orelia (female version of Oro) as the guardian of a shrine inside of them. Players could steal a legendary Assault Rifle from there or buy them from Orelia instead. There were also a couple of bigger garages for modifying of cars (because of the wheel update) and some football pitches (because of the reveal of the secret Battle Pass skin Neymar) added around the map. The last addition was the Bat Shack as a reference to the Batman Zero Point Comics during the season. It was located near Slurpy Swamp and was something like the Fortnite version of the Batcave (just a lot smaller).
The Battle Pass was generally pretty good, even though I did like the previous one a little more. Disappointing was also the fact, that 3 out of the 8 characters were collaborations instead of original story related characters (Epic seems to have sold out at this point of time and I don't believe we are ever going to see another season without collaboration skins in the BP). The skins I like the most were Agent Jones, Raz and the Spire Assassin. Agent Jones was especially great since he got 6 different versions and most of them were really well done and related to the story. His default style is the classic agent in a suit one, while style 2 and 3 show a more shredded suit outfit of him. Style 4 is a Karate outfit reminiscent of the Karate-Kid movie. Style 5 is his soldier outfit from the Zero Crisis Final Event and Style 6 is a Robin Hood like outfit. I am particularly fond of outfit 1, 5 and 6, which I probably used the most during the season. The Spire Assassin was also pretty well designed with her metallic armour, the nature design and the glimmering lights. She does look like a fitting Guardian of the Spire. Raz default outfit reminded me a lot of Aladdin. It looks fine, but in itself wasn't that spectacular. This changed with Raz alternative Glyph Master outfit, which was a corrupted version of him. His skins turned into dark purple with shining glyphs all over it. 'Dark Raz' looks very cool. Another really well done outfit was Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider games. The devs wisely gave her 3 different outfits representing the different Tomb Raider timelines. One was the Lara from the Remake games (2013 onwards), one was the Lara from the Legends, Anniversary and Underworld games and one was the very classic Lara from the PS1 era. All 3 look fine, but I did like the classic one the most. Neymar was the secret skin of the season and I did share the initial disappointment of most players, that we were getting Neymar instead of The Foundation skin (I would still really like to get that one). That being said, the Neymar skin ended up being pretty cool (It is however still unclear why he is part of the Battle Pass at all). Neymar got two different versions with football jerseys, which were kept pretty ominous in order to avoid copy right issues I assume. These outfits however could also transform into some kind of Transformers Superhero version of Neymar, which did look pretty cool. The last collaboration skin of the BP was the superhero Raven from the DC Titans comics. She also had three outfits representing her classic comic design, the current comic design and one skin of her Titans TV show version. The oddball skin of this season was Cluck, a chick person. I honestly didn't like his outfit all that much with the weird mix of his fur, his skin and his eggshell. At least all of his styles were very different (one classic yellow chicken, one water version and one dark chicken). The last skin was Tarana, who is a local from Boney Burbs. She represents this primal age theme pretty well and her primal style is suiting her well.
A big new gameplay feature from CH2S06 was the introduction of Wildlife. Chickens, Frogs, Boars and Wolves are now roaming across the Fortnite map. Boars and Wolves are even aggressive and will attack upon sight. All animals will drop meat (new healing item) upon defeat. Update 16.1 introduced the Raptors as a new season specific primal animal form. These creatures are faster and more aggressive than the other animals and they will additionally also drop crafting materials.
Which leads us to the other big new gameplay feature of the season, the crafting system. Weapons could during CH2S06 no longer just be upgraded at upgrade benches, but instead had to be manually upgraded by players with resources. Every weapon could either be upgraded to a primal weapon variant (via animal bones) or to mechanical weapons (through mechanical parts). At the beginning of the season this resources were a bit too rare, but luckily the devs decreased their rarity via an update, which made them more accessible. I nevertheless never turned into a big fan of this new crafting system and was relieved, when it got mostly removed in the next season.
The big new weapon type for the primal season were all kinds of Bows. They were obviously slow firing, but did a good amount of damage and got particularly useful with the upgraded bonus affects. Mechanical and Primal bows each had 2 different further upgrade options, which gave these weapons side effects. Primal flame bows could turn wooden structures into flames quickly and were produced via a firefly jar or a gas can. Primal stink bows required a stink sac or stink fishes and produced a cloud of poisonous gas. The mechanical explosive bow required 6 grenades and gave explosive damage with every shot. The mechanical shockwave bow on the other hand needed 2 shockwave grenades to be produced and used the same sling effect as the grenades. Even though I also never was the biggest fan of the bows, I did enjoy the different fully upgraded versions of them, since they proved to be pretty useful in combat.
Other new items involved the Hunter's Cloak (which makes all animals drop their hostility towards the player), the Stink Flopper (Fish that could either heal a player or be used like a stink bomb) and the Cuddle Fish (functioned like a proximity mine). Updates during the season also introduced the Grappler Bow (which acts as both a grappler and an exotic bow) and the Recycler (a new weapon that sucks in environmental structures and shoots them out as a new projectile). The Recycler could potentially do a lot of damage, but it also had a slow rate of fire and even longer charging time. I personally didn't find it all that useful. Still worth pointing out is, that all Sniper weapons got vaulted during Chapter 2 Season 6. This was probably done in order to encourage the use of bows.
A smaller new gameplay feature was the introduction of off-road tires in the middle of the season. They can usually be found around the new increased garages and will take 1 item spot. The tires will be thrown on a car and transform it into an off-road version (can be used on every car type). These improved cars will drive significantly faster offside the official roads (nearly identical speed than on the roads) and you will even be able to drive on small mountains. Alternatively the off-road tires can also be used to replace a damaged wheel at a vehicle. This may have only been a small update, but it did improve the driving experience across the map significantly.
At the end of the season players could, at places like Risky Reels, get randomly abducted by alien spaceships, which was a Teaser for the following Alien Invasion season. The players got absorbed by a green light and thrown out somewhere else around the map. This was certainly a fun way of teasing the future season.
The in CH2S05 introduced NPCs also played an important role in CH2S06. There were 46 of them scattered around the map (even more than the previous season), but only very few had multiple locations to spawn. That was definitely a good change, since finding a specific one could turn into a hassle before. Most of the BP characters were also NPCs and Jonesy even received 9 (!) versions of him. These included for example Slurpy Jonesy, Scubba Jonesy, Ranger Jonesy and the first Jonesy and fitted the overall lore for the season and Agent Jones role in it pretty well. I will not go into too much detail, but most of them were placed in fitting locations (like Scuba Jonesy at Coral Castle, Lara Croft in Stealthy Stronghold, Slurpy Jonesy at Slurpy Swamps and so on) and a couple of them even truly enhanced the story. This was, because for the first time some of the challenges during the season actually involved lore (instead of random collecting and killing of things). The Spire quests involved Tarana (in Boney Burbs), Raz (at Colossal Crops) and the different Jonesy versions. These quests also explained why Raz got corrupted by the Spire and turned into his shadow version. He than replaced the Spire Assassin as the Guardian of the Spire. This was overall a good change and I always appreciate even more lore and story related aspects. This being said, the quality of the story quests could certainly still be enhanced, but the foundation has been laid.
There were also a couple of LTMs and Events during the season. The two most important were probably 'The Impossible Escape' and the 'Lara and Aloy' LTMs. The Impossible Escape was unique, because it allowed players to impulsively form squads in the middle of a match with other players they met. The goal of the mode was to find helicopter parts scattered around the map, to survive against wildlife and other players and to finally escape with a rebuilt helicopter from the island. The Lara and Aloy LTM functioned more traditionally. It was a Duo mode, in which one player got the role of Aloy and the other Lara. Lara could only use her double pistols and Aloy only her bow. All other weapons were disabled for the mode and the amount of wildlife was increased. Otherwise, it played like a regular BR match, but through the weapon limitations it strongly encouraged teamplay in order to succeed.
There were also some Sport Events and LTMs during the season in the form of the Neymar Event, when his skin was released and 3 football pitches appeared on the map, and the NBA Basketball event, which turned the Fortnite Creative Hub into a big Basketball area (there was an extra LTM called 'Court Crushers', where players had to slide down a giant ramp and jump into various basketball hoops to outscore the other team).
Parallel to the season DC also released every couple of weeks some Fortnite Batman Crossover comics called 'Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point'. These apparently played before the current season, but they did influence the addition of the Batshack during the season. Every physical comic also included a code to unlock a cosmetic article in Fortnite (some were skins, others just melee weapons or backblings). Users who purchased all the bonus codes received an additional Batman armoured skin (which in my opinion didn't look as good as the original Batman from Season 10, but I guess it is at least unique...). Gameplaywise the Comics didn't influence the season at all (was that wasted potential?).
A very positive side note was that Chapter 2 Season 6 was after CH2S03 the only season of this chapter, that managed to reach the optimal season length of around 10 weeks. I hope they are going to aim for this more often in the future (but that is probably like hoping there won't be any collaborations skins in future Battle Passes).
Pro:
- Spire location and Primal area well done
- Spectacular Zero Crisis Final Event
- Overall good Battle Pass
- Entertaining selection of LTMs (Impossible Escape, Lara and Aloy etc.)
- Addition of Wildlife
- Finally some story related challenges
- Off-road tires improve driving around the map
- Near perfect season length (around 10 weeks)
Contra:
- Crafting system can be annoying
- No snipers this season
- Not many map changes during the season
(- No Foundation skin in the Battle Pass)
Result:
I was a little bit negatively biased at the beginning, because I liked the previous season and its desert biome so much (which unfortunately got completely removed), but Chapter 2 Season 6 was a pretty good season on its own. The heavy focus on Bows and the new crafting system were initially refreshing, but later on turned out to be quite a bit of a chore. On the other side the Primal Biome and the Zero Crisis Final Event were pretty cool and the additions of Wildlife, off-road tires or challenges supporting the storyline were significant improvements, that lasted beyond the season. A good Battle Pass, pretty entertaining LTMs throughout the season and a practically optimal season length helped make Chapter 2 Season 6 a pretty memorable and worthwhile season.
7.5/10
