Fortnite Chapter 4 Released, What To Expect And When Consoles Will Come Online

Chapter 4 Season 1 for Epic Game's mega-popular Battle Royale hit s Fortnite is scheduled to launch today.

There are some very interesting and intriguing updates in this latest chapter. We'll start with what is arguably the biggest technical update: the move to Unreal Engine 5.1. We reported on the release of Unreal 5.1 when it arrived in November and Epic  looks like they're taking full advantage of much of the new tech in the engine, which is visible in the trailer for Chapter 4. The trailer features some gorgeous lighting and obvious use of nanite tech.

The trailer is reminiscent of a scene out of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. We see a wide array of characters from many intellectual properties, including ones not within Epic games' purview. There is Geralt from the Witcher, DOOM Guy fist bumping the collectible of himself, and more. These characters are mostly unlocked through Battle Pass.

Fans of the game will likely be excited to see the new island that is also part of the update. The trailer opens on a scene of a new space-faring bus flying into a floating island in the sky. The new location looks just as impressively large as its predecessors. In addition to previously-available vehicles to help players traverse the terrain, dirt bikes -- dubbed Trail Thrashers --  have been added to all the new locations, like Frenzy Fields, Shattered Slabs, Brutal Bastion, Anvil Square, and the Citadel.


Other than dirt bikes there are other new means of travel as well, like vaulting, or as Epic defines it, hurdling. In this update, when you sprint towards a waste-high obstacle, you can now hurdle over it, making environment traversal in constructed areas much faster.

There are also new reality augments. At intervals throughout the match, players will be given a randomized choice and be granted two augments that can provide faster reload, an explosive bow, glider redeploy, supercharged vehicles, or heightened jump capability while sprinting.

This latest chapter also provides half a dozen new weapons, four new provisions, and Epic has also added a Point of Interest capture system.


If you're wondering when you'll be able to play with the latest update, it won't be long. It has already launched for the PC, but Epic's servers are obviously under a heavy load so the download and wait times may be significant, so be patient. For consoles, however, there might be a bit of a delay for some folks. A messaging indicating it could be as late as 9:00 PM PT has greeted some Xbox gamers.

There are definitely more things in this update than we could list here, so check out the full change log if you want a complete, detailed break-down.