This week, Epic Video games rolled out a brand new sequence of quests (previously often known as challenges) in Fortnite referred to as Cipher Quests. These are solely out there in-game for a restricted period of time (till Friday, March 10 when the occasion ends), however they’ve reignited a spark deep in my coronary heart. A deep, burning ardour for Fortnite challenges of seasons — and Chapters — previous.
You see, few chapters in the past, again when Fortnite’s lore was in its very primitive levels and collaborations have been a mere chance, the weekly challenges we obtained felt really thrilling. We had secret battle stars to trace down through coordinates hidden in a loading display screen. There have been challenges requiring us to trace down particular collectibles throughout the map, time trials to finish, and flaming hoops to leap by way of. They actually leaned into what makes Fortnite effectively… Fortnite. Its zany, eccentric, and tongue-in-cheek strategy to the Battle Royale style.
Alas, in some unspecified time in the future just a few Chapters in the past, Epic opted to huddle all of those enjoyable challenges collectively and shove them in a darkish closet, by no means to see the sunshine of day once more. These days we get cookie-cutter quests that contain consuming particular gadgets, dealing harm with sure weapons, or racking up air time in a land car. Very not often can we get a problem that actually has you placing in your detective hat and trench coat and monitoring down cheeky gnomes or deciphering coordinates. Up till now, that’s.
You see, Fortnite’s Cipher Quests are available two flavors — Unencrypted and Encrypted. The previous is, sadly, extra generic tosh we’ve seen time and time once more by this level: Spend Bars, Get Eliminations, Injury Opponents with the Infantry Rifle or Six Shooter, Acquire Shields… you get the concept. They’re not actually all that inspiring.
The Encrypted quests, although, are a wholly completely different kind of gravy. Merely put, you’re given half of a quest goal adopted by a string of numbers that it is advisable decipher. The code that these challenges are partly comprised of was initially teased by a Fortnite tweet that was ultimately solved by none apart from everybody’s favourite existential-crisis-inducing language mannequin, ChatGPT.
Whereas it’s not taken too lengthy for the Fortnite neighborhood to determine precisely how the cipher works — it’s not fairly a straight translation of 1=A, 26=Z, and so on. — it has at the very least added some intrigue and thriller to the mundane mechanic we’ve grown accustomed to over the previous few Chapters.
Whereas utilizing the Fortnite Cipher has been enjoyable to make use of and decide what we now have to do, the precise targets themselves haven’t been all that inspiring. The primary required you to work together with a desk in a sure location (Examine the Wall Beneath the Jap Constructing), one other tasked us with utilizing a sprig in a selected location and one other was interacting with a pc (Decrypt the Sign Beneath the Snowbank). None of that are precisely the wild treasure hunts we used to embark on, however hey, it at the very least seems like Epic’s making an attempt one thing a little bit bit new, and we will’t be mad at that.
Deep down, I do know the times of looking down secret Battle Stars are lengthy behind us. I do know I’ll most likely by no means emote at Forbidden Dance Signal places, or find and dig up gnomes because of their fairly eerie guffawing once more. In any case, the straightforward challenges we’ve obtained now have come about for a motive. To maintain the lots who wish to grind out the Battle Go as quick as potential glad, with minimal obstruction to making sure they get their cash’s value. However absolutely, there’s a center floor to be discovered between uninteresting and repetitive quest sorts, and collect-a-thons, and overly sophisticated or cryptic quests that can permit everybody to be glad.
These Cipher Quests, regardless of how fleeting the occasion could also be, do give me some hope for the way forward for Fortnite’s quest system. With Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 2 as a result of arrive subsequent week, there’s hope that we may even see a change to weekly quests. C’mon Epic, convey the gnomes again, on the very least!
