Fortnite’s latest skin-shedding has seen the battle royale take on a more Hollywood-ish guise, with the new Pacific Break map parodying the American west coast. Epic have also taken the chance to add in self-revive items you can use to bring yourself back from the brink and an option which makes building simpler.
Meanwhile, the update’s rollout has seen one of the artists who created some graffiti of Back to the Future protagonist Marty McFly have to produce video evidence that their art wasn’t generated by flinging a prompt at AI amid allegations from fans, which follow Epic CEO Tim Sweeney calling for game storefronts to do away with AI disclosures.
First of all, the update itself. The battle bus has been taken out of commission, so you’ve got to surf to the new island, dubbed the Golden Coast. Battlewood Boulevard, Sandy Strip, Wonkeeland, and Bumpy bay are among the new locations to explore, and they’ll likely be full of people dressed as The Bride from Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. As alluded to earlier, Marty McFly will also be there.
If you’re shot and end up writhing on the ground, Epic have added in a self-revive device that’ll automatically save you if it’s in your inventory. Failing that, you can now roll around and sprint while you’re down but not out, or be chucked into one of the reboot vans driving around the map for an auto-revive. In the settings, you’ll find the option to simplify building, with Epic saying it works just like the established simple edit, with you just looking in a direction and voilà, building occurs.
The new map boasts wingsuits you can use to fly about and reload progress for weapons is now saved. So, if you’re flicking in a new magazine and get interrupted, you shouldn’t then have to start from scratch when you try again.
Now, on to the McFly art. Reddit users have accused a number of bits of artwork they’ve spotted in the update this far of potentially having been made using generative AI. One of the pieces accused of this was a bit of Marty McFly graffiti that’s unclockable via the battle pass. The artist behind that particular work, freelance illustrator Sean Dove, was quick to share a video showing the different layers the art’s comprised of.
“I guess someone on Reddit thinks this was AI,” Dove wrote in a separate Instagram post. “I think the culprit is a clock in the background. I grabbed some clocks off image search, collaged them, and halftoned them. The numbers are bad, entirely possible I grabbed an AI clock and wasn’t paying attention.”
As of writing, Epic haven’t confirmed whether any AI-generated art was used in the creation of Pacific Break. I’ve reached out to the publishers for comment.