Fortnite’s long-awaited first-person mode will debut with the launch of Fortnite Ballistic on December 11. This is not a battle royale mode, but instead, a 5v5 Counter-Strike round-based shooter in which a single team attempts to set off a Rift Point Device bomb with the other team trying to disarm it.
There are no respawns in Fortnite Ballistic–the round concludes when an entire team is eliminated or the Rift Point Device disarms or explodes. You will start each round with some credits and a pistol. The credits will be used to buy guns between rounds when each player chooses a gadget such as proximity mines and bubble shields.
- Read more: All Fortnite Season Start and End Dates
By surviving the round, you get to keep your things. Dying means you’ll have to buy new items all over. Fair warning: if you win a round by detonating the Rift Point Device, you may still die in the explosion, which will be interesting for those teams that have to defend the armed bomb from a team that tries to disarm it. The first team to win seven rounds wins the match.
Epic has described Ballistic as being in “early access” rather than a fully featured new mode. Ballistic will only feature a single map at launch, called Skyline 10.
Fortnite Ballistic will arrive with both ranked and unranked varieties. In ranked, the game will not backfill your team with new players if your allies leave–but if your game crashes or disconnects, you’ll actually have a three-minute grace period to get back in, something Fortnite has never allowed in an official mode before. And, yes, there are leaver penalties in ranked Ballistic, including a short matchmaking ban.
Despite being a first-person mode, Fortnite Ballistic will support most of Fortnite’s cosmetics, including skins and emotes.
Fortnite is a battle royale/survival/tower defense game developed by Epic Games and initially released worldwide in 2017 for PC, Mac, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android. It was later ported to Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.