Major changes are headed to Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 5, including the return of a fan-favorite version of the Battle Royale map.
After debuting back in Fall 2017, Fortnite's Battle Royale mode has become one of the biggest names in gaming.
Epic Games' multiplayer shooter is now the stuff of gaming legends, with over 1 million total daily users worldwide (via Active Players) and pop culture crossovers that have included everyone from Ariana Grande to Oscar Isaac's Moon Knight.
With the highly anticipated new season of Fortnite on the way, here is everything fans should know headed into the latest iteration of the multiplayer juggernaut.
When Is Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 5 Releasing?
Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 5 will come to every version of the game starting on Friday, November 3.
Epic Games confirmed the date as a part of Season 4's Battle Pass, which had a November end date on it when introduced back in August.
Season 5 will be a little different, though, reportedly only lasting one month (per Mirror).
Rumors have pointed to this shorter length being because Season 5 will mark the end of Chapter 4, setting up where Fortnite will go with the incoming Chapter 5.
This means Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 5 will likely last from Friday, November 3 until Sunday, December 3.
Is Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 5 Bringing the Old Map Back?
It has long been speculated that the upcoming new Fortnite Season would bring back fans to an earlier version of the game in some capacity or another. And that has since been confirmed.
After months of rumors about a return to a Chapter 1 map, the official Fortnite account posted on X (formerly Twitter), "Sprint (or Mantle, your choice) back to Chapter 1," confirming that the return of an old map would be part of the Season 5 update:
"Sprint (or Mantle, your choice) back to Chapter 1....see you soon 11.3.2023."
Epic Games has also teased this old map's revival by hiding props from the classic Fortnite map in the real world.
Vice President and Co-Founder of Epic Games Mark Rein teased that his "word for the next season" is "rewind," which makes sense if the game is going back to an older version of the Battle Royale island.
While some had hoped this would be the return of the original Chapter 1 Season 1 map, that does not look to be the case.
According to reliable Fortnite leaker HypeX (via X), this revived map will be from "Ch1S5" (aka Chapter 1 Season 5), sporting locales like Tomato Temple, Dusty Divot, and the infamous Tilted Towers:
"A reliable source claimed a day before S4 that Chapter 1 returns in S5 due to the time machine breaking, and that we'll cycle through ch1 seasons for a month with constant map changes and OG weapons / loot pool, until the blackhole, and then we go into Chapter 5. And today we see Ch1S5 teasers.."
Fortnite has celebrated the return of the iconic Tilted Towers in a new trailer featuring plenty of combat in the famous hectic POI, with the drive-in movie theater of Risky Reels also appearing at the end to confirm its return. Fans even catch a glimpse at the legendary SCAR back in action long after its removal:
The trailer is notably played to the late Juice WRLD's legendary song "Lucid Dreams," perhaps hinting toward his long-awaited Fortnite debut as an icon skin coming in Chapter 4 Season 5.
This is in line with a tease from October 10 by the official Fortnite X account which featured an image of a time machine going back to the date "2018 07 12," which was the first day of Chapter 1 Season 5.
Some had feared going back in time to the OG map could spell the end of some recently introduced Fortnite features like tactical sprint, sliding, and mantling, as the older regions were not built for such gameplay features. But fans should fear not as the more recent additions are prevalently featured in the new trailer.
Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 5 kicks off on Friday, November 3. The current season expected to end around 4 a.m ET/1 a.m. PT before around three hours of scheduled maintenance, leading the new season to begin around 7 a.m. ET/4 a.m. PT.
