I recently wrote a story over at Game Rant regarding the latest conspiracy theory surrounding Epic’s massively popular game, Fortnite. Read that here if you’re interested.
While I’m a casual player of Fortnite, I couldn’t help but get sucked into the current rumors surrounding the game. The Reddit community has been incredibly active in actually putting together a number of really great theories about its future.
For those who don’t know, a strange comet has appeared within the Battle Royale game mode, slowly getting closer as the days gone by. While it’s not as extreme as, say, the moon from The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, something is definitely up. Currently, the biggest theory out there is that the comment is going to crash into Tilted Towers, arguably the most popular location for people to drop in while playing Battle Royale.
Evidence has started to mount from fans with the most recent one containing a lot of interesting data that sounds really plausible. While many assumed something would happen on April 1, just like the Mayan End of the World theory, the day came and went without anything happening.
Now, eyes have turned to April 18, as one poster took a look at all of the evidence out there and noticed an interesting trend. First and foremost, it was discovered that the Battle Royale map takes a lot of cues from the country of Poland. In fact, if you superimpose Poland onto the map of Fortnite Battle Royale, you’ll see a lot of interesting things.
It’s not as crazy as it sounds when you remember that the main Epic Games team is actually the ones behind the PvE mode, Save the World. For Battle Royale, People Can Fly, the shooter-heavy development studio took the lead and they’re based in…you guessed it: Poland.
Many of the points of interest seem to line up with actual cities and what’s more interesting is that they make sense. For example, the capital city of Warsaw is regarded as a great place to shop, so naturally, the real world city lines up with an area on the Battle Royale map known as Retail Row. Another location called Haunted Hills lines up with an area in Northern Poland that was abandoned during World War II, eventually being turned into a graveyard for those soldiers.
The theory really takes off when taking a look at the Tilted Towers location. This area matches up with the Polish city Poznan. What’s interesting about this is that Poznan was actually struck by an asteroid. A national park was set up to commemorate the event, known as The Morasko Meteorite Reserve. According to the Reddit user, there’s a likely chance that the comet will likely do the same thing to Tilted Towers. Basically hitting the city or at least part of it which is intended to change the feel of the area as well as the current meta.
The theory also aligns with another community found Easter egg. Console players discovered odd controller vibrations during matches of Battle Royale, ranging from very light to strong rumbles lasting 1.5 seconds. One user decided to treat it like morse code and discovered a message: SOS D 5 418.
So what does that mean? Obviously, SOS is an international distress signal. The D and 5 stumped people for a bit longer, but it was later used in a grid overlayed on the map. Of course, D5 points to Tilted Towers. The last part, 418, was another head-scratcher, though most people believed it referenced a date such as April 2018, or even 4/1/18.
This latest theory believes those last two numbers are not the year, but a day: April 18. This is significant because there’s an actual meteor shower that occurs between April 16th-25th every year called the Lyrids Meteor shower. Could it be that this comet is actually coming on the 18th? Could be.
Even as a causal Battle Royale player, I’m intrigued to see where Epic is going with this event. It certainly has the community working overtime to figure it out, so Epic kinda has to do something now, or risk disappointing a large portion of its community. What do you think Epic has up its sleeves?
