Where Are Fortnite’s Helicopters In Chapter 2, Season 2?

Fortnite

Epic

Chapter 2, Season 2 of Fortnite has finally arrived after four long months of relative nothing in the first season, and things are starting out pretty strong with the narratively cool secret agent theme and one of the better battle passes I’ve seen.

I also like the all the different map additions which are either action movie locations (the Oil Rig) or supervillain lairs (the Shark, the Grotto, the Yacht). And yet most of them are…weirdly hard to get to?

Part of this has to do with something that is flat-out missing with the arrival of season 2 here, helicopters.

As you go to all these new locations, you will notice that pretty much all of them have a helicopter pad. And yet no helicopters. We have seen helicopters in the season 2 trailer, but they didn’t show up in the game when the season launched.

This is not how vehicle debuts usually work in Fortnite. Additions like planes or the mech were available from moment one. The only thing I can think of being different would be Ballers, which I believe were added a week after the season started, and I suppose the same could be true for helicopters.

And yet this situation is kind of different because so many of these new locations would benefit from having helicopters to access them. Specifically, the Oil Rig, the Shark and the Yacht are all in pretty remote locations off the far edge of the corners of the map. You can land there (and drop into a bunch of henchmen, which is its own kind of dangerous. But once you want to leave? Chances are you’ll be swimming back, as all the helicopter pads each of these locations have remain empty.

From the helicopter we see in the trailer, it looks like these are just going to be transport helicopters, rather than attack vehicles like the plane and mech before it. Unless I’m missing something, I don’t see any weapons on that chopper, and it’s certainly not a military type “Apache” helicopter, that much is clear. Perhaps there could be more than one variant, but that would be a first for the game.

Destiny 2

Bungie

I wonder if Epic is experimenting with adding something that is pure, unrivaled mobility without having to deal with the problem of it being overpowered in combat, something that we quickly ran into with planes and mechs when those debuted, and those seasons were more or less completely defined by those vehicles, and had to be nerfed constantly accordingly. A helicopter that just gets players from point A to point B seems less controversial, but still useful. Though I do wonder why they decided to open the season without it. Maybe just to have something new to debut every week like the game used to have, before that mostly went away last season.

We also know that other things are coming like some sort of bouncy land vehicle and also a sword as a new weapon. Not like, an Infinity Blade sword, I don’t think, but something more tame for close range combat, as it’s shown in many of the seasonal previews.

My guess it that we may get helicopters in the game as soon as next week. But for now, those pads remain empty and these locations hard to get to and back from.

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