‘Transmission Intercepted’: The First ‘Fortnite’ Chapter 2, Season 2 Teaser Raises Strange Questions

Fortnite

Credit: Epic Games

Update #3: The last one for today, probably? For those not up with the periodic table, the “Au” here almost definitely refers to gold:

Update #2: Another teaser for today, we’ll see what happens with these:

Update: Things are moving a little quicker here, it would seem! Usually it’s one of these a day, but we’ve already got a second one:

Traditionally, the first teaser of a new season in Fortnite sort of gives the theme away. That’s what it’s done going all the way back to Chapter 1, Season 4, at least, when Epic revealed the surprise superhero theme that really set the tone for what would constitute a season going forward in the game. That’s...not what’s happening this time around, at least not really. Let’s check out the first teaser:

Not a lot to go on here. What we can see is more or less what we’ve already seen, because Epic started teasing this with an ARG over the weekend. Basically, here’s what we know: there’s some sort of shadowy, government-ish agency involved in this whole thing. It’s likely the ALTER organization that we’ve heard tell of in the game. Also, gold is involved, which we can also see in the fact that some furniture on the island has started turning gold. And that’s about what we’ve got.

We can see the format going forward pretty easily, however. My guess is that over the next few days we’re going to start “decrypting” this message, and by the end we’re going to have some complete text: expect a whole lot of Wheel of Fortune-style guessing in the meantime. When it’s finished, we’ll have some sort of hint that almost tells us what’s going on, but not quite. Epic likes to save one or two final surprises for when the season actually drops.

The wildest rumor about the new season will be that gold is coming to the game not just in an aesthetic way but for gameplay, as well: that it will be a fourth building material after wood, stone and metal. Depending on how its implemented, that could be a fairly major shakeup to a basic building system that hasn’t seen much change since Fortnite was first released, even before it became battle royale. That’s nowhere near confirmed, but the presence of gold objects in the house at least points in that direction.

Until then, we’ll wait for our first hint of a new message tomorrow at 10:00 AM, which has been teaser time since the trees were still young.

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