Fortnite just released a slew of updates for its Festival event. One of the fan services coming to the game is headlined by The Weeknd.
Fortnite Festival: A New Way to Play
Epic Games is looking to end 2023 with a bang as it launched major updates last Saturday for the Fortnite Festival. This comes hot on the heels of its Big Bang Event, which saw the announcement of other new game modes such as LEGO Fortnite and Rocket Racing.
The three-part update adds to the existing game modes of Fortnite, namely Battle Royale and Zero Build. For Epic’s Vice President of Global Partnership Nate Nanzer, “Fortnite is already much more than a Battle Royale game.”
While the game already had its share of virtual concerts in the past involving big names like Travis Scott, Ariana Grande, and Eminem, the Fortnite Festival is gearing up to offer players a more interactive experience where they can play songs alongside their favorite artists from different genres. And this time, the Weeknd is going to be bathing in the spotlight as the face of the inaugural Festival with all of his four hit songs Blinding Lights, The Hills, Save Your Tears, and Take My Breath included in the new game mode. The game offers a skin for the artist, too, as an extra treat.
The upgraded gameplay unlocks the “jam” mode and main stage where players can mash buttons on their controllers corresponding to the ones shown on screen in a “note highway” format, which is a callback to popular games like the Guitar Hero series. They can also customize their avatars and musical instruments along the way.
The Fortnite Festival update has cross-platform and online compatibility to give a better metaverse experience for players, which could truly rival Roblox one day.
Harmonix Partnership
Fortnite Festival is a product of a partnership with Harmonix, a video game developer with a portfolio spanning almost three decades. Among the popular video game series it published were Dance Central, Rock Band, and Guitar Hero (before it was acquired by Nevermore and Vicarious Visions).
It’s for this reason that we are seeing a resurgence of Harmonix’s rhythm game design in the world of Fortnite. Speaking of Guitar Hero, don’t let go of the old guitar and drum kit lying in your garage just yet because the company is aiming to reintegrate their functionality into future game releases. But for now, Fortnite players will have to bear using controllers or keyboards.