Epic Games
In the arms race that is the battle royale genre, there appear to be three games at the top, with Fortnite being one of them.
Apex Legends and Warzone round out the top three, although an argument can certainly be made for PUBG to be somewhere in there.
Over the years, the games have been borrowing pretty liberally from each other. When Apex launched, it didn’t take long for Epic to add a pinging feature and even Reboot Vans to the game.
Fast forward to Fortnite Season 8, and it’s looking like they are getting ready to borrow another iconic feature, this time something from both Apex and Warzone.
Sliding Coming to Fortnite
Sliding Animations have been added to the game but they’re unfinished! (thanks to @gameshed_ for getting me the image)
Reminder that it will have a 2 seconds cooldown between each slide & FOV increase + camera shake while sliding!
According to a leak from HYPEX following the v18.10 update, a sliding animation has been added to the game, but it’s not quite finished.
HYPEX says it’ll have a two second cooldown between each slide and your field of view will increase and camera will shake while sliding.
This feature obviously borrows a lot from other battle royale games, but the difference with those two games is that they are first-person shooters. Fortnite is a third-person shooter, so Epic will have to make sure they get their sliding animation right because you’ll be seeing it a lot.
We’re not entirely sure why Epic feels the need to add something like this to the game, but we’re not going to get too upset about more ways to move around on the island.
As for a timetable for release, we’re currently left guessing like you are. With it being in the files, it seems like something that will happen at some point in Season 8, but we don’t have a concrete launch date.
More Mobility Coming
Epic Games
In Fortnite, there’s really not a ton of ways to move around on foot, and if you’re left without a car or boat, it’s pretty hard to get around the map.
Perhaps sliding down a mountain gives a speed boost or something along those lines. Sliding is used as a gap closer in a lot of other shooters, so it’ll be interesting to see what Fortnite players are able to come up with here.
The two second cooldown is something to be aware of because that is more than enough time to be the difference between life or death in Fortnite.
On top of this, there’s another mobility option that appears set for arrival in Fortnite and it’s rideable animals. Like sliding, we don’t have a clear release date for this either, so don’t hold your breath about it happening any time soon.
To their credit, Epic does appear like they are trying to keep Fortnite as fresh as they can, despite the game celebrating its fourth birthday this year.
We’ll just have to wait and see if these changes end doing anything to the meta of Fortnite. Epic does like to mix things up season to season, and cars were a true game-changer when they released. We’ll see if sliding ends up doing the same thing.