Chapter 2 Season 7 of the Battle Royale Game Fortnite was named 'Invasion' and was entirely focused on the big Alien Invasion, which got teased towards the end of the previous season. The Aliens arrived with a gigantic mothership on the Fortnite Island and blew the Spire (POI Highlight of the previous season) up before the new season began. This attack mobilized the IO, who started to organize a resistance against the Alien Intruders. The inhabitants of the island got split into groups of Alien supporters, who gathered in Believer Beach, and people supporting the IO and their new outposts all around the island.
The premise of the story in CH2S07 was pretty interesting and reminded me a lot of the movie Independence Day. I liked the Alien Invasion scenario and the fact, that you got both Alien and Human Resistance Skins through the Battle Pass. What I didn't like about the story was that it for the second time during Chapter 2 completely abandoned the previous storyline. The Ghost vs Shadow Story just vanished after CH2S03 without any closure and the Zero Point Jonesy/Foundation Story also just suddenly disappeared to be replaced with a new Alien Story. The Fortnite writers should really do a better job than this, especially since they do seem to have some pretty good ideas. These ideas overall however still feel to random instead of giving you the feeling of being one complete and coherent Story Chapter.
What I however loved about the storyline was its inclusion into the weekly challenges. The golden quests every week told a connected story over the course of the whole season, where players were aiding Dr. Slone in her mission to defeat the Alien Invaders. The beginning quest of every week was even narrated by the Dr. Slone Voice Actor and the quests actually felt useful in comparison to all lot of challenges, who often feel mundane. CH2S07 however even had a couple of the purple regular weekly challenges, that let players do useful stuff to fight the Aliens. The Challenge System was therefore the best it has ever been in this season (also much better than in CH2S08).
Another aspect I didn't like in this season however was the lack of significant Map Changes and the removal of Biomes. CH2S05 and CH2S06 brought a Crystal Desert and Spire Biome, that CH2S07 completely removed and replaced with the original boring grasslands instead of continuously altering the map like they did in Chapter 1. I have often criticised this development of reverting nearly all map changes and was pretty disappointed at the start of CH2S07. The cool Spire POI got replaced with 'The Aftermath', which is just a boring hole in the ground. There is nothing to do or see here in the middle of the map. This was a huge change for the worse. Sweaty Sands turned into Believer Beach, but remained 95% identical to Sweaty, which was another letdown. Only during the Cosmic Summer Event did the location freshened up a bit, where I could have agreed to call it a renewed POI, but the changes got reverted after only around 2 weeks... The only major POI change was the addition of Corny Complex, which replaced Colossal Crops. On the surface Corny Complex looks a lot like Frenzy Farm, but underground there is the IO Headquarters beneath the farm. This is actually a pretty cool location and I liked it a lot. The season also placed a bunch (7) of smaller IO satellite stations around the map. Those are actually also a good addition, since they look nice and offer reasonable loot and one of the best cars in the game, the IO limousine. These outposts are useful since they are often placed between locations and in areas, where players would otherwise rarely drop. On the other hand these satellite stations all look nearly identical and they can not replace real POI changes, which CH2S07 lacked off. During the season Holy Hedges has been changed to Holy Hatchery and got some few Anti-Gravity areas inside of it. The change made sense and felt a bit more impactful than at Believer Beach, but the POI still remained mostly the same. During the season large parts of Slurpy Swamp, Coral Castle and Corny Complex also got destroyed by the Aliens. Storywise it made sense, but these locations actually just got worse, since they were lacking half of their buildings without any replacement. Slurpy Swamp got hit the hardest, since it also lost its Slurp Water, which was the best aspect of Slurpy Swamp. It was subsequently only known as Sludgy Swamp and lost its appeal to most players. Every couple of weeks gigantic abductor ships additionally appeared over random locations, which abducted players and let them compete in a race to collect loot. This was a nice addition. I would have just hoped for them to stay more constantly over the whole season on the map.
Crafting from the previous season was mostly removed, which I appreciated. It was an interesting idea for one season, but it was the right call to drastically reduce it afterwards. From the new weapons and items in this season I liked the Pulse Rifle, the Rail Gun and the Recon Scanner the most. Pulse Rifles were working a lot like the great Stark Energy Rifles from CH2S04, so I naturally liked them. The Rail Gun was a sniper, that did a little less damage than regular snipers (but still enough) and had to be charged up and could even hit players through walls. This was a great way to counter the players, who were just building a million walls in a few seconds. The Recon Scanner was using quickly recharging recon grenades and had infinite ammunition. This was a great way to scan locations ahead and to know where other players are positioned during a gunfight. The Kymera Ray Gun, Plasma Canon and Propifier I liked less. The Ray Gun might have had infinite ammo, but was too slow firing and didn't do enough damage. You could rarely outgun anybody with this weapon. The Plasma Canon was super useful against buildings, but was just way to slow. In the time it took the energy ball to destroy 2-3 walls, the other player already built 5-6 new ones. The Propifier was a nice gimmick, which could transform the player into an item in order to trick opponents. In reality this never worked, since the objects always stood out of the environment. The Grabitron, which could pick up objects and throw them forward, was okay, but also felt more like a gimmick than a powerful weapon. Inflate-a-Bulls transformed players into an inflatable bull, which allowed them to traverse the map quicker, but otherwise wasn't really useful (another gimmick). Alien Nanites were also gimmicks, but fun ones. You could throw them to create an anti-gravity field in the area.
The Alien Invasion season also brought small alien space ships as vehicles into the game (called saucers). These could shoot slow, but very powerful energy balls onto enemies, or abduct players or objects with their abductor beam. The saucers could alter height and use a boost, for a quick escape. In the beginning of the season the saucers were too strong and allowed players to fly so high, that players on the ground couldn't even see them anymore. The saucers got therefore nerfed and couldn't fly that high anymore (additionally the Ray Gun did a lot of damage to saucers). If the saucers lost its lifepoints, it wasn't immediately destroyed, but instead shutdown and sank to the ground. Only after the third shutdown did the saucer finally explode. At the beginning I was also annoyed by their extreme flight height, but later on became a fan of the saucers. They obviously were a great addition to an Alien Season.
CH2S07 also had a couple of events. The most important certainly was the Story Event at the end of the season called 'Operation Sky Fire'. Players got beamed onboard of the enormous Alien mothership, which loomed over the Fortnite map for the entirety of the season. The players were supposed to destroy the alien mothership with the bombs placed inside and then escape, but Dr. Slone betrayed them all and wanted to leave them for dead. Instead, the players activated a formerly purple Cube inside of the mothership (similar to that one of CH1S05) and turned it blue instead, as a friendly Cube. Shortly after, the bombs exploded and revealed an army of evil purple Cubes. Players and Cubes alike dropped back to the Fortnite map, while the mothership crashed in flames.
Then there was also the Cosmic Summer event at Believer Beach, which was a giant celebration by the Alien Supporters in Believer Beach (unfortunately the improved Believer Beach switched back after only 2 weeks). There was a very small event, where all whiplash cars got replaced by Ferraris ingame (Fortnite apparently sold out again and used their game as a big commercial platform). The other larger event of the season was the Rift Tour Concert Event by Ariana Grande. The show was okay, but I honestly hate the idea of concerts being a part of videogames...
The Battle Pass system got completely switched up for CH2S07. Instead of a direct order of unlockable items from Level 1-100, players could now choose relatively freely what they wanted to unlock. Items were placed into areas of 10 levels and you needed to be Level 10, 20 , 30 and so on to unlock them. Within these areas the item order could be chosen freely by players, with the exception of skins usually having to be unlocked last in each area (You got 5 stars for every level up and could use them to unlock the Battle Pass items). I personally wouldn't have needed this new BP system, since you were still pretty limited in what you unlocked and when. You couldn't just unlock a Level 100 skin in the beginning for example. The BP menu itself also looked visually far worse than before, but Fortnite apparently wanted to change things once again for the sake of changing things. Additionally, different styles, that had previously been part of the BP, were now outsourced as rewards for the levels 100-140 and the colour variation styles just started at 140. I don't like this change at all, since it forces players to grind to level 140 instead of 100 to get all the unique Battle Pass content.
The Battle Pass itself was a mixed bag in CH2S07. I was initially super disappointed and would still consider it one of the weakest overall, there were however also a couple of good skins.
I was not a big fan of the Sunny, Zyg and Joey skin. Sunny was the unofficial leader of the Alien Supporters in Believer Beach and was therefore at least pretty fitting, but I can't say that I particularly liked her skins. Zyg was a robot and somehow an ally of the Aliens. I honestly just found him pretty weird and rarely used him. Joey is a shirtless fully tattooed muscle guy, who could take off his human costume and reveal the female Alien inside. The alien version of Joey was a nice surprise, but I didn't like the human form and the Kymera Alien was actually looking much better fitting than Joey. Kymera was also special, because players could unlock collectables during the season, to customize Kymeras appearance. They could change his face, his armour, his body colour and so on. This was a decent and an interesting idea. Unfortunately the grind for the Kymera collectables was pretty tedious and a lot of them had to be collected through hundreds of Cosmic Chests in matches, which was too much. Guggimon is a rabbit person and apparently a collaboration skin from a company called Superplastic, where he became a social media star. I never heard of him before and I don't really like this weird skins being part of the BP instead of original Story Skins, but I also can't deny that I somehow like the Guggimon outfit (his special outfit has a hockey mask like Jason Voorhees). It is pretty similar with Rick Sanchez from the show Rick and Morty. I like the character of Rick a lot from the series and I finally did appreciate the inclusion of Rick and his Toxic Rick special version, but on the other hand an anime skin should never be part of a Battle Pass in my opinion. The other two skins are Superman and Dr. Slone. Dr. Slone is an important story person, which is why I appreciate her inclusion. Her default outfit however looks more than just weird. She is wearing a 3/4 pants mixed with a sweater below her shirt and double tie. Even for a male, a double tie would look completely ridiculous. For a female it is simply cringe (She doesn't look anything like a serious scientist and more like the mother of all hipsters). Luckily her alternative Battlesuit outfit looks much better and way more appropriate to the war with the Aliens. Superman was the not so secret secret skin of the season. Superman is a legend and I obviously liked his skin and the alternative Shadow Superman a lot. It is just a shame, that Superman as the secrete skin didn't seem to play any role in the story. After the Trailer at the start of the season, he was never seen again.
Another really negative aspect of CH2S07 was the beginning destruction of the Team Rumble mode. This mode was primarily being used to do challenges and have some light TDM elements. The mode was a stable since early on in Chapter 1 and remained relatively unchanged till the beginning of Chapter 2 Season 7. Now the playable area was drastically reduced and the ring was moving much faster, making it very difficult to complete some challenges and taking a lot of fun out of this mode. I remember hating this change and being very angry at Fortnite. This however was nothing in comparison to Chapter 2 Season 8, where the Fortnite Devs straight out took a murder attempt at the mode and destroyed any kind of motivation to play it. Some of the Devs seem to have went rogue, otherwise these changes can not be explained, since there were massive shitstorms after every change of the Team Rumble mode. Fortnite apparently doesn't care, that this mode is not being played anymore and many players abandoned Fortnite in CH2S07 and CH2S08. Hopefully they can turn the ship around in Chapter 3.
Pro:
- Alien Invasion scenario
- Fantastic Operation Skyfire Event
- Variety of other events throughout the season
- Saucers (Alien Space Ships) as vehicles
- Storyline through the weekly challenges (even narrated)
- Less focus on crafting this season
- New weapons/items either useful or fun
- More choices in the order of Battle Pass items
Contra:
- Removal of Biomes and too few map changes
- One of the weaker Battle Passes
- Battle Pass stretched to Level 140 instead of 100
- Decline of Team Rumble mode
Result:
Chapter 2 Season 7 was quite a mixed season. I was initially really disappointed with the lack of Map changes, the revision of the cool previous Biomes and the quality of the Battle Pass. The storytelling throughout the season was however really great and they at least tried some map changes later on. A lot of the new weapons and items unfortunately were more of fun gimmicks than useful tools, but the Alien Ships and the Pulse Rifle and Rail Gun were not only very fitting, but overall pretty entertaining. Despite the initial disappointments there was still quite some fun to be had in Chapter 2 Season 7 and they did manage to create an Alien Invasion atmosphere through the season. The Skyfire Event was also a real highlight and very well done. It is just a shame how they treated Team Rumble throughout the season.
7.25/10
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