Will It Be Worth Playing Fortnite Save The World Once It's Free?

Before Geoff Keighley and his gaming trailer extravaganzas, there was something called the Spike Video Game Awards, or VGAs. Organized by TV network Spike (a.k.a. “The First Network For Men,” because, as we all know, only men play video games), the 2011 edition of this show gave us previews of BioShock Infinite, The Last of Us, Mass Effect 3 … and a new title from Unreal Engine and Gears of War maker Epic Games.

Introduced by Design Director Cliff Bleszinski (remember him?), Fortnite was spawned from a company-wide game jam after Gears of War 3 wrapped up development. In an interview with Game Informer, Producer Roger Collum called it a mishmash of Minecraft, Terraria, and the shooting aspect of Gears of War. One of the ideas borrowed from Minecraft was farming, which was in the game “for a little while,” Collum said.

“We thought the game was going to be something we were going to build super-quick,” Collum said about its development that started in 2011. It was intended to launch in 2013.

It wouldn’t be released to the general public until 2017, delayed in part because of an increased – but likely necessary – feature scope which added progression to the game, as well as Epic’s focus on free-to-play MOBA Paragon, which wound up surviving for less than two years.

Fortnite was supposed to be free-to-play, but initially would be in early access and cost $20. I had been eagerly looking forward to it, loving its promise of a building/tower-defense hybrid, all wrapped up in a cartoony, but still appealing, three-dimensional world. Plus, who doesn’t want to save the world (ahem) from a zombie invasion using construction tools and improvised traps?

Magicman and I were so into the game that we did a First Look for it, and I kept playing for a few months after that initial release on July 25, 2017.

A full, free-to-play launch was announced as arriving sometime in 2018. In the meantime, Epic was also working on Paragon and, oh, by the way, decided to devote some Fortnite dev time to another little spin-off project that they hoped might capitalize on the success of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and provide a little extra boost to Fortnite’s fortunes …

That worked out pretty well.

(Side note: Two and a half decades earlier, a tiny game company in Seattle that produced source books for RPGs decided to work on a card game that they thought could be played in between gaming sessions, to fill downtime. That company was Wizards of the Coast, and that side project was Magic: The Gathering.)

Fortnite: Battle Royale’s explosive success made the PvE version of the game – retroactively dubbed Fortnite: Save the World – a mere afterthought. Updates were sparse, free-to-play was pushed back again and again, and finally, in 2020, Epic stated that the game would fully launch but be a paid game going forward, with no F2P in sight.

That all changed with last week’s announcement, as Fortnite: Save the World will, 15 years after its initial announcement, finally be going free-to-play. The question is, should you play it after all these years?

I’ll admit to not having closely followed the development of Save the World since late 2017. I have a tendency to avoid games that are slated for demolition, whether it’s an official shutdown notice or a case of reading the writing on the wall. When I wrote news articles for MMOBomb, it was always seen as a surprise when we received Save the World news, as opposed to any of the numerous press releases we got for Battle Royale.

Updates for the mode were few and far between, given Epic’s focus on its more lucrative mode and, a year later, the Epic Games Store. What I can recall was an enjoyable, though somewhat repetitive experience. That’s to be expected in any online game, but the same-y feelings of all the maps and the slow pace of progression were major downers for me.

The moment-to-moment gameplay, however, kept me coming back for several months. If you’ve never played before, imagine the building aspects of the battle royale but with the trap placement/horde mode aspects of something like Orcs Must Die! Spending the day running around to gather materials and building your defenses, and the night protecting your base from the hordes, is a satisfying gameplay loop and provides a different kind of frantic anxiety from a PvP game.

That said, I’d suggest getting into it with a friend or three. Communication is important, and coordinating your defenses, both passive (building, setting traps) and active (running to hot spots), is key to completing levels. Plus, even though it’s likely to be less toxic than a PvP game, I still don’t want to hear from xX_GamerLord69_Xx about how I’m a terrible player and couldn’t defend the base properly and got us all killed.

And then there was the inventory management, for all the traps, weapons, and other items you had. As the resident inventory complainer, I seem to recall thinking it was barebones and took me too long to analyze what I wanted to keep, what I wanted to toss, and what I wanted to really keep in case of an emergency – the usual gamer trap of “I can’t use this item, I might need it later!” That’s especially frustrating when you finally do set up an expensive trap, and then the monsters don’t go anywhere near it.

All in all, though, if you’ve played Fortnite: Battle Royale and never given the PvE Save the World a shot, you’ll find something familiar enough but hopefully a little less stress- and rage-inducing. On the other hand, if you’ve never played Battle Royale, you can still enjoy Save the World on its own terms, as I did before Battle Royale even existed. And now that it will soon be free-to-play, it will be even easier to try out.