Fortnite and Epic Games have long grappled with rumors and leaks about a supposed first-person mode that was said to be coming to the game at some point, but now, that mode is finally official. Epic Games announced today the “Ballistic” mode, an FPS version of Fortnite that’s more in line with some of the other modes you’d find in traditional shooters like Call of Duty games. Best of all, it’s releasing soon with Ballistic launching into early access starting on December 11th with both an unranked and a ranked mode available depending on what kind of experience you’re looking for.
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Ballistic in Fortnite will be very different from the normal modes even after the first-person element is taken into consideration. It’s a 5v5 mode geared towards the competitive side of Fortnite where you’ve got a starting set of more traditional weapons to work with and an objective that should feel very familiar to those who’ve played Search and Destroy modes or games like Valorant. The objective of Ballistic is to plant a “Rift Point Device” at one of two different points on the new Skyline 10 map if you’re on the attacking team while the defenders try to stop the device from going off to end the match. Ballistic players will spend six rounds on the same side before switching the attacker and defender roles with the first team to win seven rounds emerging victorious
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As mentioned previously, the weapons in Ballistic are more in line with typical FPS games, so think assault rifles, shotguns, pistols, snipers, SMGs, and grenades without all the fancy weapons and tools Fortnite usually employs. What Ballistic will have, however, is a new feature called “Flex Gadgets” which give players more tools to customize their loadouts. Ballistic will launch with five different Flex Gadgets: the Proximity Mine, Bubble Shield, Recon Grenade, Frag Grenade, and Impulse Grenade with all of those gadgets basically doing exactly what their names suggests they would do.
Though the overall experience in Ballistic is definitely geared towards the competitive scene, it’ll still have an unranked mode for those who want to get used to it. There’s naturally no building involved in either mode, but the unranked version lets you drop into games in progress through a backfill system so that you can familiarize yourself with Ballistic before possibly hopping into ranked. The ranked mode has penalties in place for those who quit out of matches early with matchmaking governed by the average rank of the overall party, according to Epic Games, but the restrictions and systems governing the ranked mode may change over time.
That’s true for the mode itself since this is just the early access version of Ballistic, whatever that means in the context of a game mode, so we’ll probably see Ballistic change frequently after it first goes live. It’ll be around in Fortnite starting on December 11th with no indications given that it’ll be removed at any point, so expect to hop into the 5v5 FPS mode in Fortnite next week.
