There’s a new Fortnite content update out today, as sure as the sun will rise the east. Keeping consistent with Season X, the biggest change is a new Rift Zone over by the old Soccer Field, where foraged items are glitching out and shadow stones are making a return to keep us all on our toes. But the new item is what’s bound to grab the most community attention today: we’ve got a “Junk Rift” now, which kind of like an airstrike except it drops a dinosaur on your opponents instead of firing a rocket, and it does things a whole lot quicker. And as we can see from the trailer, it’s meant to serve a very specific purpose in the meta: this is our first true B.R.U.T.E. mech counter, with the ability to one-shot the big bad robot and annihilate anyone inside:
This is a big deal! The mech remains difficult to counter, and while things will likely not be quite so simple as the trailer suggests, the ability to one-shot the walking death machine is not something we’ve had in the game so far.
My first big question about the Junk Rift would be: why now? The mech was introduced three weeks ago at the start of the season, and it would have made a lot of sense to introduce a counter alongside it, staving off some of the intense community reaction, or at least complicating it. That just feels like standard design to me: introduce both a powerful new weapon and the ability to take it down.
So that’s that, but I also wonder about the effect of the Junk Rift on high-level play, because this seems like a savagely powerful item. The mech has a ton of hit points, and so anything with the ability to wreck the mech also has the ability to wreck anything else. The way this item works feels like it’s going to have a huge impact on final circle competetive play, which usually involves a couple players furiously building and jockeying for the high ground. This thing could essentially turn that whole process on its head, allowing any character with a Junk Rift in tow to totally annihilate a giant vertical column of building and completely upend a given situation at the last minute.
Is that a bad thing? Some will definitely say yes, because it could be a massive change to the way things work now, and any sort of aggressive anti-building move runs the risk of invalidating what makes Fortnite unique. But I can’t say I hate it: Epic has said that the main reason it likes “big” items like this is their ability to create drama and spectacle at any point in the match, and pulling a Junk Rift in the final circle would be a big move in any match.
We’ll see how it affects things, or whether or not Epic will make any adjustments to how it’s implemented in competitive modes. For now, things are going to change in a big way, again. Because this is Fortnite, and that’s how it goes.
