A celestial body above the world of Fortnite: Battle Royale has the community buzzing about what it could all mean. The skybox now houses a comet, which moves separately from the storm, and it appears to be getting progressively bigger.
Kotaku reports that upon reaching out to Epic, it received only an image of Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, the television personality turned meme who appeared on Ancient Aliens. That could indicate something extraterrestrial, or more likely, is just poking fun at the wild conspiracy theories surrounding the comet.
Still, speculation is running rampant. Given the appearance of the comet and a distinct space theme to the most recent Battle Pass, fans seem convinced this is a harbinger of some major change. The comet may strike the map and change it in some way, or destroy it entirely. The eggs and explosion stickers could reference the extinction of the dinosaurs. The Save the World PvE portion could be going free-to-play too. There are as many theories as stars in the sky, but it does seem likely this is building to something. For a time it seemed to be building to an April Fool’s gag, but that day has come and gone without an impact.
Pictured to the upper right of the bus, just left of the map
Helping spur on the speculation are seemingly random controller vibrations. Fans were convinced for a time that this was a subtle clue to the comet’s meaning, but Epic has clarified that this is just a glitch. “There’s currently a bug that causing controllers to randomly vibrate,” read a tweet. “We’re working towards a fix on that but in the meantime, you can turn off vibrations in the options.”
Fortnite is a huge success for Epic, now setting YouTube records and beating out its competition. The wild success means that any minor change or clue is likely to inspire lots of conversation, and letting the community rally around a mystery is as good a way as any to keep people talking. Just today the game became available on iOS without an invite, so it’s only going to get larger and crazier before the comet does whatever it is that it will do.