Fortnite Chapter 2 “The End” event: the island has turned upside down

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Fortnite’s big end-of-chapter event just ended and it was great. After an all out war against UFOs, zombies and Cube Queen, players were rescued on a rescue mission led by Dwayne Johnson. (Well, his character in the game.) Then, the island turned upside down.

The event

Let’s go back a bit. The last season of the game was all about cubes, and just as the event loaded, a mysterious giant blue cube appeared on the map next to all the players in my lobby. Jumping on the cube caused the players to bounce off, but otherwise it did nothing but loom menacingly. We could also look at the Cube Queen in the distance, which has been floating in a sphere of energy in the center of the island for part of the season.

Hello, blue cube.Screenshot: Jay Peters / The Verge The Cube Queen floats ominously in the distance.Screenshot: Jay Peters / The Verge

When the countdown reached 10 minutes, the Cube Queen’s evil laugh echoed on the island and zombies began spawning in front of our base. Fortunately, weapons were added to everyone’s inventory, so players worked to fend off incoming zombie soldiers (even if the zombies didn’t seem to pose a real threat).

Stay back! Screenshot: Jay Peters / The Verge

When the clock reached zero, an alarm sounded on the island and the Cube Queen pyramid shone brightly. He launched a beam into the sky that opened a huge portal revealing a horde of giant UFOs. During the seventh season of the game, the island was in the shadow of a single UFO; the Cube Queen had brought an army.

UFOs and zombies approached the blue cube as players tried to push them back. But the battle began to seem impossible to win and things went from bad to worse when a UFO blew up the blue cube.

Yikes.Screenshot: Jay Peters / The Verge

Subsequently, the event took an interesting turn, shifting the perspective beneath the island’s surface in CGI footage. (It was a bit like Netflix was making a Fortnite TV show.) The game’s main character, Agent Jones, was tied to a lab chair with a device on his head, and Dr. Slone, who betrayed the players at the end of last season, apparently was about to end Jones’s life. Then, a massive figure known as The Foundation broke in to save the day – and took off his mask to reveal that he is played by, as a suspect, none other than Dwayne Johnson.

As Jones and The Foundation tried to escape, two other characters dressed similar to The Foundation rescued the players on the surface and brought them to the inner island. Players were then given the control of following someone called The Scientist to join Jones and The Foundation. But during the escape, the island began to tip over little by little.

The island began to slowly tip over. Screenshot: Jay Peters / The Verge

Eventually, players came to Jones and The Foundation at the Zero Point (essentially a large ball of energy that was a key storyline in Fortnite). The scientist assured everyone that we were safe, but then one of the giant zombies broke a window, letting the water in and forcing us all out.

Soon, my character emerged and watched as the island slowly tilted upward to be completely vertical and then fell to the other side. This crushed the Cube Queen, causing the giant portal to close with the UFOs. Then the island turned completely upside down revealing a completely new landscape. From a distance, you could see some of the new areas to explore, but a tidal wave quickly swept my player out to sea.

When will Fortnite return? Just me and the open sea. Screenshot: Jay Peters / The Verge

Now, Fortnite only shows my player at sea on an empty log. I can’t move and there’s almost nothing on the screen but me, my diary and the vast open ocean. Everything is reminiscent of the black hole that bridged the transition between chapters 1 and 2.

There is no timer or any kind of indication as to when Chapter 3 might be playable. But if you want a sneak peek of what’s to come, a leaked trailer seems to have spoiled a lot of what you can expect.

This chapter, which began in October 2019 after a multi-day period of inactivity with the black hole, has propelled Fortnite’s growing narrative ambitions with events featuring first-person storytelling, an arcade shooter versus a Marvel villain, an exciting single player event to try and stabilize reality and even a mission inside an alien mothership full of cubes. The concluding event of Chapter 2 has taken it one step further and now we’ll have to wait and see what Epic has in store for Chapter 3.

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