Fortnite season 4: Latest update adds dancing 'orange shirt kid', comet changes and other new features

The game's map has been destroyed by a comet that has created major changes throughout

Andrew Griffin
Tuesday 01 May 2018 13:40 BST
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Trailer for season four of Fortnite

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Fortnite has revealed its latest major update – and chief among the new features is a dancing child.

The Battle Royale game is currently one of the biggest games on the planet and is quickly receiving updates as developers aim to keep players interested.

The latest of those is Season 4: a major update to the game that brings changes to the map, game mechanics and new skins and emotes. The new season had been teased for some time, including with suggestions in the game that a huge comet could be falling in the middle of its map.

The comet has been teased for months, with players rushing to work out where it would fall and what would happen once it did. The rock has now fallen – and caused drastic changes to the game's map.

The game's map has been changed so that its previous area of Dusty Depot is renamed Dusty Divot, in honour of the damage. And that area has glowing rocks that give the people who find them lower gravity – likely just one of a range of new and strange features introduced with the comet's impact.

The update also brings with it a superhero theme. In keeping with that there are new skins, emotes and other features.

Fortnite is available on just about every major platform for free. But the game's structure means that it is expected that most players will buy the game's Battle Passes, which are renewed each season – so the latest update brings with it the expectation that players will spend around £8 of in-game money on the update.

That Battle Pass will get people access to the dancing child, for instance. That boy, who is now famous for wearing an orange shirt, was part of a fan competition but has since gone on to become a major fan favourite.

In March, developers Epic Games staged a competition where fans and players of the game could submit dance videos to be in with a chance of having their dances recreated as emotes in the games. But the competition ignited its own controversy: fans took a liking not to the official winner, but to the "orange shirt kid", who has gone on to become famous.

His video has been watched by more than a million people and shared more than 18,000 times, far more than the official winner. Fans pressured Epic Games to make up for the unfairness and – which they have done, with a new emote called "Orange Justice", and available with Season 4.

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