I haven't played Fortnite in a long time, but I've always admired it from afar. Shooters in general aren't my thing, and Fortnite's fast-paced, ever-changing meta just didn't grab me. I remember when the game was the butt of the joke, a childish game in a genre for tough, sweaty men. Everyone has chilled out a bit now, and it's just another video game. But what it doesn't get enough credit for is how gorgeous a video game it is, and how it has managed to create a strong artstyle even as it leans on IP crossovers. For evolving storytelling and immersive experiences, Fortnite is top of the class. It doesn't try to be photorealistic, and for that reason it often gets overlooked, but Fortnite is one of the best looking games on the planet.
One of my earliest crushes as a kid was Natalie Portman in Star Wars. This was soon followed by Keira Knightley in Pirates of the Caribbean, and given Knightley played Portman's double in Star Wars, it might be fair to say I had a type. Britney Spears and Frank Lampard round out the collection, which maybe throws that theory off a little, but I digress. The point is Natalie Portman as Padme is a very special character to me, so when she arrived in Fortnite this week, I took notice. What struck me was how much she looked like Padme, my Padme, while still being so clearly in the Fortnite style.
Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker also looks perfectly like Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker, while still obviously being a Fortnite character, even though his angular face has more texture to it than the clean curves of Padme's. There are literally hundreds of characters in Fortnite who have already proven this, be they real people (Ariana Grande or the Dune duo of Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya), or characters themselves (Goku, Morty, Lara Croft). There's nothing all that new with these characters except that I am seeing it, really seeing it, for the first time. I think we all overlook it too often.
I’m not the first one to notice that Fortnite looks quite good these days. There was an update a few months ago which made the environments even more spectacular than before, and a lot of people pointed this out at the time. Likewise, many loyal players who have been knighting forts for years will be aware that the game's unique artstyle has managed to retain a strong identity while incorporating crossovers that feel true to their subject. I don't think I have discovered gold here. But what doesn't get talked about enough is how different Fortnite is from every other game out there. It's a game, and a platform, and a billboard, and a museum, and a metaverse - a real, true, metaverse, without buzzwords or crypto or sales pitches. It is a universe where other universes collide, and is still a universe itself. It is both a work of art and the frame wrapped around an artwork.
It's one thing to be a popular shooter that goes against the gritty grain and uses bouncy, cartoonish graphics. It's another thing to have one of the most involved live-service storylines that frequently offers new narrative elements and destroys its own map to keep things fresh, with storytelling always at its heart. And it's another again to successfully add so many crossovers to your game that look both like your game and the many disparate things they actually are. Then, once more, it's another thing to offer a global platform to historic archive footage and exclusive concert space for live music. Fortnite does all this and more. It hasn't been 'a video game' for a long time. It's a machine of many things that can transform into a video game if that is what you currently require of it.
Very little of this has anything to do with Natalie Portman's Padme. That was only what made me think about Fortnite again, probably for the first time since the Ariana Grande concert. It's strange to me that we have this multifaceted thing in the middle of the gaming ecosystem, and so few of us respect what it is capable of. It can make Padme look like Padme, sure. But Fortnite's genius is that it can make anything look like anything. It can make anything do anything. It's far deeper and richer than it is given credit for. I wonder if it will ever get its due.