Say what you will about Fortnite, but Chapter Three is another extraordinary refresh

It’s easy to forget that Fortnite, in the months following its release, really wasn’t that big of a deal. What catapulted it into the phenomenon it is now was the addition of a battle royale mode post-launch, a move that showed both how brazen Epic was prepared to be but also how ambitious the developer was about updating the game. With its subsequent success Fortnite is now one of the biggest entertainment properties on the planet, and Epic has shown itself capable of leaning into that in an almost unprecedented manner.

I say ‘almost’ because individual games have had updates that made big changes over time: heck, Final Fantasy XIV destroyed its own world to reset the entire thing. But Fortnite’s towering scale and the resource Epic can put behind development has made this a game that receives constant additions and balance updates and then, once a year, flips the table.