They destroyed the Battle Bus. I repeat, they destroyed the Battle Bus. Following the excellent Zero Hour live event, Fortnite Chapter 7 opened with The Dark Voyager showing up to blow the iconic vehicle to smithereens, leaving its many parts scattered across the island.
Instead of parachuting from the bus onto a spot of your choosing, players now begin each game riding a surfboard as radical tunes play out in the background. From what I can tell, 100 wannabe victory royalers will surround the island and approach it from all possible directions, resulting in far spicier starts to each game where you are bound to engage in an unexpected firefight or two while gearing up. It’s great fun, and teases a promising chapter ahead filled with unexpected surprises.
But I don’t want to talk about that today. Instead, I want to follow up on the Zero Hour event that preceded its arrival. It was an unparalleled collision of pop culture icons that felt kinda like if Ready Player One wasn’t filled with Gen X cringe and drive-by transphobia. It was incredibly cool, and yes I’m saying as someone in their thirties who really needs to grow up.
Fornite’s Zero Hour Set A New Benchmark For Live Service Games
If you don’t play Fortnite and only hear about it from a distance, it’s pretty reasonable to see it as nothing more than IP slop. If something is popular right now, chances are it will inevitably end up in Fortnite at some point. Mere months after release, KPop Demon Hunters crash landed onto the marketplace with skins, items, emotes, and more. The iconic Huntrix girl group of Zoey, Mira, and Rumi then went on to play a key role in the Zero Hour last weekend.
But what made this recent event so special, and how does it introduce a new era for the beloved metaverse that more than justifies its obscene obsession with all things popular culture? There are a lot of reasons, thanks to both how it combines an absurd amount of fan service with an original story that takes everything in its stride and brings massive numbers of players together for an experience that lasts roughly twelve minutes.
Troy Baker and Suzie Yeung put on great performances here as Jones and Hope, a worthwhile achievement considering the absurd material they’ve got to work with.
It begins with Hope and Jones ready to initiate interdimensional travel on The Simpsons Island, with a giant, sleeping version of Homer chilling outside, seemingly oblivious to all these apocalyptic shenanigans. Our objective is to alert the Dark Presence — not the one from Alan Wake 2 — and retrieve an important crystal that is currently tearing holes in our collective realities. Yes, there is a lot of IP slop going around, but Fortnite also delivers its compelling original story developments alongside mechanical additions that make most of them feel worthwhile.
After putting out a distress signal to all neighbouring realities to help fight back against the Dark Presence, Troy Baker activates his mysterious device that will have us leave Springfield behind once and for all. What follows is ten whole minutes of buckwild brilliance. Players hop between different dimensions like Fall Guys, a Hatsune Miku concert, Star Wars, and many others before finally landing on a new island infested by the Dark Presence.
Fortnite Just Had Its Avengers Endgame Moment
But fear not, you aren’t alone! Seconds after arriving on the island, a number of portals begin to open with Godzilla, Iron Man, Scorpion and Sub-Zero, the Power Rangers, and hundreds of others to emerge from. Your enemy is seemingly unstoppable, meaning you’ll need to throw everything and more at it in order to succeed. Once control is given back to players, they are tasked with sprinting towards The Dark Presence with no specific goal in mind. You aren’t going to suddenly die or be booted from the game, since these events are all about a sense of spectacle over earning a victory royale. So, I just sat back and enjoyed the show.
King Kong and Megazords threaten to crush you underfoot as they rush towards the enemy in a flurry of crashing helicopters and soaring missiles, all as the orchestral score draws ever closer to an inevitable crescendo. It is epic, even if that means admitting I might be failing for Epic Games’ perfect recipe of nostalgia in the exact way it wants me to. You will eventually reach a point where Hope commands you to jump into a nearby chopper just as How It’s Done by Huntrix begins to blare out in the background. Turns out the world-famous k-pop group is also piloting one of them, too.
Shooting at The Dark Presence will produce damage numbers, but from what I can tell, these don’t exactly have much of an impact on how the event unfolds. But by all means, open fire if it makes you feel more involved.
It was hard not to get incredibly lame goosebumps as thousands of soldiers on the ground rushed towards the same threat, all while myriad icons of popular culture helped to bring this big bad down no matter the cost. I sorta lost my mind when I saw Hatsune Miku sitting atop the head of Godzilla to unleash her Miku Miku Beam, with the game cementing a relationship that began in the fandom but is now a tangible part of the Fortnite universe.
Once your chopper crashes, Beatrice Kiddo from Kill Bill appears in her iconic yellow outfit and not quite as iconic motorcycle to slice a tentacle in twain before offering you a ride. She even sports the vocal talents of Uma Thurman, thanks to the recent creative partnership of Epic Games and director Quentin Tarantino. Then a Star Destroyer spawns overhead, is destroyed by the giant monster, and you spend the next few minutes finally banishing them from this realm for good. Cue a cutscene for the next season as the event comes to an end.
While it would have been wonderful for our actions as players to have a more meaningful impact on the event itself, it’s hard not to praise its production values and sheer amount of spectacle. It feels like a true culmination of a chapter that has spanned most of 2025, and many of the building blocks were being put in place long before that.
Fortnite is not going anywhere, and continues to go from strength to strength with events like this that push the limits of what its metaverse is capable of. It’s one of the few live-service games I still pay attention to because of that, and I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.
Fortnite
- Released
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September 26, 2017
- ESRB
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T for Teen – Diverse Content: Discretion Advised, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact
