My Favorite Fortnite Wins

A few days ago, I eclipsed 500 wins in Fortnite: Battle Royale. It has taken six years, but I have done it. Below, I will describe my favorite wins during this time. These will be in order by season, except for the last one since it is my favorite. 

 

I play Fortnite mainly as a means to kill time when the rest of my family is asleep, more or less. My work schedule requires me to flip flop my work schedule between days and nights and a lot of these wins occur when I am on a night rotation and off of work that particular night. This is not me trying to be a hard core streamer or play in the FNCS or anything like that; it is mainly as a way to blow off steam when I don't have to attend to fatherly or husbandly duties. I also have autism with savant tendencies, which explains why I can remember some obscure details about matches I played in a game up to and over 5 years ago. 

 

Knowing that, here are my favorite wins:

 

"The One That Started It All"

Chapter 1, Season 4, Solo Builds

I came into Fortnite after the Thanos crossover had ended for Avengers: Infinity War. I naturally had no idea what I was doing. My very first match I inadvertently loaded into squads fill, wandered Wailing Woods for a while, then thought I could just pickaxe someone.

Anyway, as the season went on I had a better idea of what I was doing, though I still stayed away from most fights. In this win, I was laying low while 2nd and 3rd got into it, and ran up when 2nd finished. 2nd tried to build up, but I didn't do anything. Perhaps thinking he could get an easy win, he jumped down to the ground and I eliminated him with a green tactical shotgun. 

 

"Silence is Golden"

Chapter 1, Season 7, Squad Builds (no fill)

I took a long break from Fortnite that lasted for much of Season 6 and half of Season 7. I only had 4 wins up to that point and I found the whole thing rather frustrating. For some reason when I did get back at it (well after the Ice King event), I did solo squads. The first match that I ended up winning, I had the TV muted as my wife slept nearby, with no headset, and no visual audio. I sky camped in a plane the whole match, ditched into Fatal Fields, and hid amongst the corn as the endgame fighting raged around me. I got a few third-party knocks in, got ahead of the storm, and ambushed the last player with a purple pump shotgun. 

 

"Don't Ask Me How I Got My Season X Umbrella"

Chapter 1, Season X, Close Encounters Duos (No Fill)

Back when Fortnite had LTMs, one of the ones they had was a shotgun only mode called Close Encounters. Up close and personal was not my play style at the time, so the strategy was to employ sky bases, which could not be shot down due to the lack of any medium to long range weapons. I did my thing, built a base off a hill between Fatal Fields and Salty Springs, and parked it up there with a bunch of heals. A duo strayed a bit to my level, but I drove them away with junk rifts. I had heals for a heal off and was content to let the other duos duke it out below me. The storm closed, I got primed to use the heals...and I won. That would be the first of three 0 kill wins I have had, the other two occurring in C2S7 and C2S8, respectively. 

 

"Minigun Mania"

Chapter 2, Season 2, Squad Builds (No Fill)

During the long second season of Chapter 2, the lobbies were filled with up to 80% AI. I'm not sure why, since this season occurred during the COVID-19 lockdowns and there was certainly no shortage of players for a given match. Regardless, this season and the heavy AI lobbies gave me the opportunity to really get going as a player. I won 19 matches that season, 8 of which were solo squads. Up to that point, the most wins I had in a season was 2. 

In this particular match, I used a strategy from a SypherPK video where you got both a mythic and legendary minigun with full ammo and just went ham. I had not ever really bullied a lobby before, but I basically got through the match unscathed with my first ever 10+ kill match. This was the first time I had gone 1 v 3 in the end game as well, as they opposing players could not coordinate their strategy due to the relentless spray from the miniguns. 

"Who You Gonna Call?"

Chapter 2, Season 4, Solo Builds

During Fortnitemares 2020, if you were killed you would spawn back in as a ghost with a chance to team up with other ghosts to defeat all of the remaining "living" players and get a "Nightmare Royale". In this match, I had had a slow game, only 2 or 3 kills going into the end game. However, there were about 20 ghosts and they were tearing apart Lazy Lake looking for me and the last remaining player. Fortunately, when you eliminated a ghost, they blasted you away about 10 meters, so I used a combat shotgun and just blasted away. Somehow, I cleared the lobby of all ghosts and in the process, ran up my first 20 bomb. While it does not count in the traditional sense (my first real 20 bomb is listed later), I had not seen a number like that before and I found it very amusing. 

"Bombs Away!"

Chapter 2, Season 7, Solo Builds

In this alien themed season, there were UFOs that one could take up and blast away at enemies. They did not have unlimited life though, and would need to get back on the ground to recharge before one could take off again. Unless, of course, there were giant space ships parked over locations that one could rest a UFO on and sky camp while the battle rages below. 

In this match, I was parked over Slurpy Swamp for the duration of the match and taking potshots at players. The storm finally forced me off, and I took a UFO over the narrowing zone and spammed the two players below me trying to fight it out in the traditional sense. As Lazarbeam would say though "Memes Beats Sweats". 

 

"100th Solo Win"

Chapter 2, Season 7, Solo Builds

On the very last night of C2S7, I was on the cusp of my 100th solo win (My 100th overall win had occurred earlier that season). I had an all-nighter before my work week started and I spent the entire night trying to eke out that 100th solo dub. I finally got it at the end of the night in chaotic end game around Steamy Stacks. I got ahead of the storm, however, and was able to eliminate the last player as he tried to rotate in. The kill came with a tactical shotgun, which would turn out to be the last time I got to use that particular shotgun until Fortnite OG some 2 years later. 

 

"A Record Setter"

Chapter 2, Season 8, Solo Builds

In what appeared to be standard match at first, I was bouncing around the southwestern corner of the map, mainly punishing AI around Lazy Lake and getting up to 7 or 8 kills, nothing too crazy for me by that point. However, as the end game turned to the hills between Lazy Lake and Retail Row, I seemed to be drawing in everyone's fire. I did have central position in the storm, which probably had something to do with it. I did have a full stack of metal and a legendary rapid fire SMG (the fastest SMG in the history of the game) and was able to take down player after player. As the storm shifted away, I was able to build a tunnel to stave off the last player while I desperately tried to heal. He breached the wall, however, and I was forced to fight, and win. At that point, the 15 kill win would prove to be my highest kill match until Chapter 4. 

 

"Do Something!"

Chapter 2, Season 8, Solo Builds

In the final days of Chapter 2, a countdown was located over a river between Boney Burbs and Pleasant Park to announce how long it was until "The End" event occurred. In this particular match, I landed at the makeshift fort where the event would take place and sat there for a full three minutes with the "Have a Seat" emote watching the countdown. When the sound of trouble came to close, I only belatedly started loading up for the match ahead. Despite my deliberately slow start, I managed to get a 6 kill win that ended with my bullying someone with a burst assault rifle from on top of the canyon between Lake Lake and the center of the map (then covered with the Pyramid). 

"Last Match, Last Win (Chapter 2 Edition)

Chapter 2, Season 8, Solo Builds

Chapter 2 will always be held in high regard for me as this was the map I was able to turn a corner and start winning a high number of matches. I won 10 matches in all of Chapter 1, and 129 throughout Chapter 2. In the final days before "The End" event, I started this match at Pleasant Park, far in the northeast, and go all the way to the southwest at Camp Cod deep down in the mountains of that area. I had always won a disproportionate amount of matches that pulled to the the mountains that ringed the southern portion of that map, and this one proved no different. I got a rocket launcher from supply drop and punished people with it from on top of a log cabin at Camp Cod. After 3rd place mistakenly opened his build and I snuck a rocket in there, 2nd came down from atop his mountain perhaps thinking he could ambush me. He did not know that I was at full strength (having been untouched by 3rd) and dispatched him in short order with a burst assault rifle to bring Chapter 2 to a close for me. 

 

"Three is Company"

Chapter 3, Season 1, Trio Builds

Now we get into the matches where I am not necessarily a solo act. At the beginning of Chapter 3, Season 1, my friend "J" (who it should be noted got me into the game in the first place), started playing again and we got a duos win together. Then we dragged our friend "A" in as well. We won exactly one match together that season (I wasn't playing much because I was put off by the completely different weapon loadout). We third-partied the 3rd and 4th place trios and after dispatching them, was rushed by 2nd place. We managed to take them out to claim our only builds win as a trio, as the next season would see the advent of Zero Builds. 

 

"Get Out of the Way!"

Chapter 3, Season 2, Trio Zero Builds

In the last match of the season before the Collider event, my friends and I were roaming around punishing the lobby, and running up the kill count with 25 or so eliminations between the three of us. "J" had gotten his mitts on a helicopter and was roaming around trying to find the last solo player, all the while blasting "The Ride of the Valkyries". The last player opened fire on him for some reason rather than laying low, and "A" and I rushed to the scene. "J", however, took it upon himself to try to run over the player with the helicopter, blocking him from my purple drum shotgun. After "J" made his pass, I managed to get the elimination, though "J" was very amused with his antics in the attempt. 

"Last Match, Last Win" (Chapter 3 edition)

Chapter 3, Season 4, Trio Zero Builds

Towards the end of Chapter 3, I changed my playstyle up from hiding all match to actively engaging enemy players as the match went on. I had my first 1000 kill season, I was getting wins in both builds and zero builds, and had my first solo 10 elimination win in some time. Of all these, the last match of the chapter was the most memorable. Our drop was our favored location in Chapter 3, Chonkers Speedway, and we rotated north in another dominating win of ours that ended in Chrome (formerly Coney) Crossroads. In a rather chaotic ending between three full trios, "A" and "J" got knocked and somehow I ended up blasting the last player inadvertently thinking there was still another trio to be dealt, though it turned out they had already been dispatched. 

 

"A Record Setter, Part 2"

Chapter 4, Season 1, Duo Zero Builds (with "A")

With the new aggressive playstyle, I broke multiple records this season. Most wins (to that point), most 10+ kill wins, highest KDR (to that point), highest elimination total (to that point). In this match, "A" and I landed at Frenzy Fields, moved north, then back into the Fields as the circle closed there. At that gas station near Frenzy, "A" was knocked and eliminated and I got caught in the crossfire between several duos. I somehow got all of them. After rebooting "A", we moved back into Frenzy Fields, eliminated the third place duo, which left a single opponent. My "Storm Mark" augment tagged the player hiding behind a tractor. I went for the "overkill" win and blasted the tractor into the player with Deku's Smash. It was a 17 elimination win for me, breaking my record from C2S8 mentioned above.

 

"Shout!"

Chapter 4, Season 1, Solo Zero Builds

In my last win of C4S1, I was chasing story quests and ran into another player doing the same. As is proper in these cases, I indicated a truce and this player and another joined in a synced emote "Shout" (the Lloyd Williams song) that lasted for several minutes until the storm drove us away. The first player that had joined ended up fourth, victim of a Deku's Smash, but I immediately dispatched the offending player. Then 2nd place tried to use a Deku's Smash on me, but I shot him down before he could fire it. Then I started performing "Shout" again. 

 

"Nah, I Just Did it Solo"

Chapter 4, Season 3, Duo Zero Builds (Solo)

I liked the "Wilds" season. I set a wins record again (broken in C5S1) and eclipsed 10 Duos Wins in a single season for the first time. While most of them were with "A", a soloed a few of them, including my last one of the season when I was deliberating chasing a win to get to 10 Duo dubs. On the third try, I got a 9 kill win by eliminating three of the last four duos. When I told my friends I had gotten the win, I was asked if I had been doing fills and I simply said I had done it by myself 

 

"The 20 bomb"

Chapter 4, Season 4, Solo Zero Builds

I wished I had played the Last Resort season more. The heists were fun, the "Fortnitemares" event was awesome, and it was nice to see some old familiar weapons. In this match, I started up in the north and just started piling up elimination after elimination. The match ended south of Shattered Slabs, where I had picked off 5th and 3rd to eclipse 20 eliminations. I very nearly choked that under the weight of what I was trying to accomplish, but I did manage to clip the last player to secure my first (for real, no ghosts this time) 20 elimination game. 

 

"Another 20 bomb"

Chapter 4, Season 4, Duo Zero Builds (with "A")

As the season wound down, I had completed all of the available quests, cleared Level 200, and was just playing for fun at that point. That may have explained why I did not feel nearly as pressured when I went apocalyptic in this match as well. Armed with a gold twin-mag AR (I miss those) and the vampiric blade, "A" and I ravaged that lobby. In the end game near Brutal Bastion, I "1 v 2'd" a duo by blasting them out of the sky as they tried to redeploy, then watched as the lobby fell apart to singles besides "A" and I. I had a general idea of where they were based on recent fighting, and led "A" into one, and then the other. I was not paying attention, but "A" called my attention after securing the win that I had had 20 eliminations again. 

 

"Nana Nana"

Chapter 5, Season 2, Ranked Solo Zero Builds

While the main skin that I use is Boardwalk Ruby, I will sometimes put on shuffle and let it rotate through my presets. For some reason, I always do inexplicably well when I use a meme skin. I have had several high profile wins as "Fabio Sparklemane". In this one, while using the "Peely" skin, during the Avater: The Last Airbender" crossover, I was doing ranked matches when the strategy to survive to the endgame was to get Airbending and roll around until the opportune moment. I cannot imagine the 2nd was particular happy about losing to an overripe banana doing the "Nana nana" emote in a competitive match. 

 

"That's It?"

Chapter 5, Season 3, Duo Zero Builds (with "J", and "A" Spectating)

As it turns out, this was win 498. In a duos match, "J" and I were roaming around completing quests as somewhat solo players. We both had a successful "1 v 2" before falling back in together and capturing Loot Island. When we had gone to capture the island, I had noted there were 13 players left besides us and thinking with so few we likely would not be contested (we were not). A duo with two medallions was situated near the island and we started taking shots at them. One of them foolishly zipped up right where "J" and I (and his hired NPC, Artemis) were sitting and quickly regretted it. The other part of that duo took off towards Reckless Railways and we gave chase, feeling rather bullish. The POI was the scene of intense fighting that wound down on our approach. Someone had third partied the guy we were chasing and Artemis pinged him hiding in a building below me. The ping showed he was trying to use a med kit, to which I said, "Oh, hell no". I dropped in on him, thinking I could get him quick and take the medallions for the end game. It was to all three of our shock when that elimination ended the match. No one had been keeping track of the player count while we were chasing that player and once we got over our shock, we had a good laugh about it. 

 

"500 f***ing wins"

Chapter 5, Season 3, Zero Build Trios

I cannot do this one justice. I had insisted on waiting to get 500 until all three of us could do it at once because I wanted it to be a special occasion. What I did not expect was a combined 27 elimination match that saw us ravage the lobby with all three medallions, all but two of the mythic weapons, and all three mythic cars. It was one thing to get the 500th, but to do so in such a legendary way instead of accidently lucking into it was phenomenal.  

And my absolute favorite:

"The Deku Smash"

Chapter 4, Season 1, Trio Zero Builds

I had had a flair for drama in this season with the Deku's Smash. I had used it to end my then record setting match listed above, and also had used it to win a trios match that I had essentially soloed (with 12 kills) as "A" and "J" had been downed doing quests. But this one, I cannot top. In a match I happened to be streaming for some reason, we started in Slappy Shores, lost "A" in the midgame, then lost "J" trying to rotate out of the storm. I only got away with a Shockwave Hammer. I was in a bad way, with no ammo and poor weaponry when I stumbled upon a Deku crate. It came down to the last two trios and tried my best to stay out of trouble in a vague hope of third partying whoever survived. 

This win was so dumbfoundingly awesome that I did not pick up the game again for over a week because I kept thinking "There's no way I top this, ever". And even as I have had a couple hundred or more wins since then, that remains the case. 

The Story of Fortnite

 Fortnite: Battle Royale was released in September 2017 and was a very improvised project at first. The game developers admitted they didn't have any clue it would explode in popularity as it did, as at that time the emphasis was on Save the World. But explode it did and Epic Games quickly devoted a full time development team to Battle Royale. 

Season 1 of Fortnite was retroactively labelled as such when Season 2 came out. Season 1 ran from October to December of 2017 and did not include a battle pass. Instead, you could buy cosmetics if you advanced enough levels during the season. Season 2 introduced a proper battle pass (with 70 tiers), and had a medieval theme. It ran through February of 2018, at which point Season 3 started. This season introduced the full 100 tier battle pass. At this point, the story of Fortnite could be considered to properly begin. 

A comet appeared in the sky above the island on March 20th and grew closer as the season progressed. On April 26th, meteors began falling from the sky during matches, destroying builds and disrupting gameplay. This was a precursor to the main strike of the comet, which occurred to start..

Season 4

The comet struck the island, blasting Dusty Depot into Dusty Divot, with smaller strikes hitting elsewhere on the island, including at Risky Reels and Tilted Towers. A base was built around the main meteor strike by a then unnamed organization to investigate it, but someone had hitched a ride on the meteor and escaped before discovery. 

Meanwhile, the season had a superhero theme, with a superhero base on one side of the island and an evil lair on the other. The villain lair was home to a rocket that was intended to destroy Tilted Towers. But unbeknownst to the villain, the rocket's programming was highjacked by the person in the meteor, known only as the Visitor. So instead of blowing up Tilted Towers, the reprogrammed rocket instead created a giant rift in the sky. 

With the giant rift in the sky, smaller rifts began appearing across the island, taking items such as the Durr Burger head and later depositing it on a hill halfway across the map. Items from other realities back to land on the map, like a Viking ship, Easter Island statues, and others. 

Season Five

Season Five brought some of the biggest changes to the island up to that point. The southeast corner of the map became an immense desert, replacing Moisty Mire. The superhero and villain bases were abandoned, and Dusty Divot was similarly abandoned by the investigating organization and overgrown with trees.

As Season Five progressed, the Crack in the Sky began to decay as Enforcers from an organization seemingly maintaining control of the island began to restore order. Before they could finish though, the Crack was hijacked by a force of immeasurable power from another reality that used the Crack to place an object of immense power on the map. 

The Cube (named Kevin by the community) began to roll around the map and established six anti-gravity zones. Additionally, when fired upon, the Cube would shoot a bolt of energy that would damage the nearest player. After establishing the anti-gravity zone, the Cube rolled through Tilted Towers, then dropped into Look Lake, turning the lake into a bouncy surface that lasted trough the end of the season until the Cube reemerged.

Season Six

The Cube shattered Loot Lake on September 27th, taking with it the house that had been located in the center of the lake. The Floating Island meandered around the island, gaining energy from the corrupted areas it had imprinted on the island in the previous season. 

The Floating Island returned to Loot Lake and shattered, leaving the Cube spinning over the crater it had created, using its power to get to something within the crater. The blast wave rocked the island and the Cube's power awoke Cube Fiends, creatures who would pursue and harass players and could overwhelm them with their numbers. 

Meanwhile, the Cube continued to attempt to penetrate the power underneath Loot Lake. Its power began to decay, however, and on November 4th, it exploded, sending players into the In-Between, a location between the realities of the Fortnite universe. 

Shortly after the event, an iceberg shrouded in a snowstorm began to approach the southwest corner of the map. As Season Six wound down through November 2018, the iceberg grew closer, heralding a new threat to the island for...

Season Seven

On December 6th, 2018, the ice mass smashed into the southwestern corner of the map, burying Greasy Grove and Flushed Factory in a sheet of ice and replacing them with news locales such as Happy Hamlet and Polar Peak. Embedded deep in Polar Peak was the Ice King, who had imprisoned with a creature simply known as the Prisoner. Initially, the castle on top of Polar Peak was buried in ice, but after arriving on the island, the Prisoner began to regain his fiery powers and the ice sheet melted. On January 19th, 2019, in a desperate bid to keep the Prisoner at bay, the Ice King used a shard of the shattered Cube to unleash a wave of snow and ice across the island, bringing about Ice Fiends in the process. 

It was all for naught. The Prisoner escaped and took up residence in Wailing Woods in the northeast corner of the map. There, as his power grew, the woods began to wilt due to the power of his heat. Throughout February 2019, earthquakes began to rock the island, spreading fissures over the area and even shattering a building in Tilted Towers. It was all leading up to...

Season Eight

On February 28th, 2019, a volcano erupted in the northeast corner of the map, with a jungle biome developing around it. Pirates led by Blackheart took up residence in nearby Lazy Lagoon, eager to plunder the island. While the Ice King's, the Prisoner's, and Blackheart's forces all fought on the island, an unnamed organization was searching for something. They excavated a hole near Fatal Fields, at the base of Dusty Divot and by Loot Lake. At Look Lake, they found what they were looking for and dug in the center of the lake, revealing the entry to a Vault. 

Keys began appearing around the island that made their way to the Vault as the season progressed. On May 4th, 2019, the Unvaulting Event took place. In a first for the game, the event took place as its own separate playlist, instead of a live in-game event as previous ones had been. 

Players unvaulted the drum gun, but at a terrible cost. The eruption destroyed the shops of Retail Row, shattered Tilted Towers, and even impacted Polar Peak, where a large crack appeared in the side of the mountain. The skies of the island remained dark until the end of the season. 

Season 9

On May 9th, 2019, in the wake of the volcanic eruption, Tilted Towers and Retail Row were rebuilt into Neo Tilted and Mega Mall, respectively. A series of slipstreams were constructed around the map for quick movement. Seemingly, everything was calm following the upheaval of the past two seasons. The volcano had collapsed into a caldera, and the new locations were powered by the mysterious orb shown to be in the Vault during the previous season's event. 

It wasn't to last. The impact to Polar Peak revealed another creature imprisoned by the Ice King, a monster known as the Devourer. It soon escaped, with the castle of Polar Peak on its back, and headed out to the water around the island. It returned and attacked the still exposed Vault in Loot Lake, but did not breach it. 

In an act of desperation, the keeper of the Vault, known as Singularity, teamed up with the unnamed organization and created Mecha Team Leader in a construction factory built in the caldera. On July 20th, 2019, the Devourer made a fresh attempt at the Vault and the mech, now ready, went to face it. 

The Mech defeated the Devourer and flew off into space with the pilot still onboard, but the ramifications were soon felt. The Mech had torn the orb, formally known as the Zero Point, out of the Vault and cracked it. Over the final days of Season 9, the condition of the Zero Point continued to deteriorate until on August 1st, 2019, it imploded. 

Season X

 

The energy blast froze the Zero Point in a time stasis bubble and sent parts of the island back in time. Dusty Divot reverted back to Dusty Depot, with the comet that generated the impact frozen in midair over the island. A capsule was in the meteor again, though this time instead of the Visitor, it contained the Scientist. The Scientist took up residence at Dusty Depot and began to work on methods to fix the Zero Point. 

Over the course of the season, the Scientist activated Rift Zones, that reverted the towns of the island back into previous forms. Neo Tilted was turned into Tilted Town, Mega Mall reverted back to Retail Row but was overrun with Cube Fiends, brought back the Floating Island with a new Cube attached, and Paradise Palms turned into Moisty Palms. These events opened rifts in the sky above the island, providing the means for the Scientist to enact his plan. 

During September 2019, another rocket was constructed at Dusty Depot. On October 13th, 2019, it was launched.

The comet destroyed the time stasis bubble surrounding the Zero Point, unleashing its energy all over the island before it collapsed in on itself. For two days, the black hole it spawned was all anyone would see when they logged into the game. 

Chapter 2: Season 1

Behind the scenes, the investigative organization that lurked in the background of Chapter 1 seized control of the Zero Point while it recovered. After it finished, they forced it to reboot, and a new island was created from the remnant material of the old. A team was sent in to explore the new island...Apollo.

Chapter 2: Season 1 was the longest season by date in the history of the game, lasting from October 15th, 2019 to February 20th, 2020. Nominally, it was stated because of technical issues with new mechanics the game developers wanted to create for later seasons. However, at the start of the season, the battle pass stated the season would last 8 weeks. I think they had another season lined up and it fell through due to licensing issues. Because eight weeks after the season started, Fortnite had their next crossover event. 

I think the game was going to have a full Star Wars season in time for the release of The Rise of Skywalker, but couldn't get it together in time. Outside of the Star Wars event (which introduced lightsabers and blasters to the game), very little happened in this season. The investigative team sent to the island formed the basis of E.G.O., but during the course of the season, opposition forces gathered against them under the guise of A.L.T.E.R. Skirmishes began to break out on the island while a member of E.G.O. with a certain golden touch began to set up shop at the center of the island. 

Chapter 2: Season 2

Midas brought a team of operatives to the island with him and formed Ghost, setting up bases around the island, while the remnants of A.L.T.E.R. became Shadow. This season introduced bosses carrying mythic weapons and vaults to unlock when they were defeated. Over the course of the season, however, Midas' team began to turn towards Shadow. Spy war operations started on the island, pitting Shadow and Ghost forces against each other.

An extreme complication occurred during this season that gravely impacted game development. During Week 4, the world went on lockdown at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The game developers were forced to maintain the game from home, which greatly delayed game updates. The season, which was supposed to end in April 2020 originally, lasted until June instead. 

In the meantime, Midas had his own plans. He was aware of the investigative organization and their control of the island. He knew they had created the Loop, which trapped characters on the island in a 22 minute cycle that pitted them in fights to the death until the cycle started over. Midas, however, was on the island outside of the Loop and wanted to break it, freeing the island and everyone on it from the endless death fights. So while the spy wars carried on, he used the Zero Point to power a Device. On June 15th, 2020, he activated it. 

The Device worked, temporarily. The investigative organization, in a panic, forced the Loop to restart, but in doing so, created the Wall of Water, which replaced the Storm for the last two days of the season. But Loopers (players in the game), had escaped the Loop, even if temporarily. 

Chapter 2: Season 3

The Wall of Water broke on June 17th, 2020 and flooded the island. The spy wars were over and Midas was seemingly killed. For the first month and a half of the season, the island was partly under water, which slowly receded with time. Once enough of the water had retreated, drivable cars were activated for the first time in the game as well. 

This was the shortest season of Chapter 2 at 10 weeks and really not much happened story wise. At least until the end of the season anyway. A strange rift appeared in the sky over the southwest corner of the map. A hammer crash landed near Salty Springs that no one could move. Strange symbols appeared on a hill near the center of the island. All of this was leading to...

Chapter 2: Season 4

When the Zero Point collapsed in on itself during the End event, the energy emanating from it attracted beings from other realities, including Galactus of Marvel Universe 616. Thor arrived ahead of him and summoned Iron Man, Doctor Doom, Wolverine, and others to defend the island against Galactus' inevitable assault. 

 

Tony Stark transported his workshop from Upstate New York to the island and began working on a plan to beat Galactus. In the meantime, Midas returned as a ghost to the ruins of the agency and haunted the island for a couple of weeks for Halloween 2020. 

 

Throughout the season, Galactus could be seen approaching the island, at one point dipping below the horizon before returning shortly after as having landed and was walking towards it. On December 1st, 2020, Galactus attacked the island and tried to seize the Zero Point. 

Chapter 2: Season 5

The attack on the Zero Point left it shattered and floating above the island, spawning a vast desert over the center of the map. It also spat out locations it had absorbed from the previous island during the Black Hole onto the Apollo map, with locations like Dusty Depot, Flushed Factory, and others reappearing. 

 

The investigative organization was finally identified as the Imagined Order. This organization had seized control of the Zero Point and built an elaborate base underneath the island in order to control it. It was they that ran the Loop and controlled the Battle Royale. When Galactus ripped the Zero Point out from their base, it threw it into chaos. John Jones, first seen in the Device event, was sent into the Loop by a then unknown boss with one goal: restore the Zero Point and keep Loopers (players in Battle Royale) from escaping like they did in the Device event. 

 

Over the course of the season, Jones brought in hunters from realities all over the Omniverse. But his actions destabilized the Zero Point as the season wore on. The Zero Point served as the bridge to all other realities and it's destabilization represented a threat to all realities. While Jones was bringing in hunters, the IO stood by and let the Zero Point deteriorate, causing Jones to become disillusioned with them. On March 16th, 2021, the Zero Point imploded. 

Chapter 2: Season 6

The leader of the Seven, the Foundation, was summoned by Agent Jones, and agreed to fix the Zero Point in exchange for information on Geno, the leader of the Imagined Order, and the Sisters, two missing members of the Seven. He was not able to stop the Zero Point from imploding, but he contained the blast. The island was sent into a primal state, with wildlife arriving on the island and sniper rifles were replaced with bows. 

 

The spire at the center of the island radiated strange energy and one of the new characters tapped into this dark energy, becoming corrupted by it in the process. The energy signal radiated out into space and attracted the attention of an alien spaceship. In the closing days of the season, strange signals were received on the island's TVs, and abductions occurred at the beginning of a match, with the victim being dumped on a random part of the map with full shields. On June 8th, 2021, the invasion began.

Chapter 2: Season 7

The Imagined Order reemerged after the chaos with the Zero Point of seasons prior. They brought Zero Point back down into their base under the island before the alien mothership could seize it. The Foundation was ejected to the last reality that the Zero Point had been oriented towards and away from the Loop. Agent Jones' boss was revealed to be Doctor Slone, who portrayed herself as a friend to the Loopers and as a leader in the war against the aliens. 

 

Over the course of the season, the mothership rotated around the island as if it was investigating the area. An arms race broke out between the IO and the aliens, while Slone worked on a plan to beat the mothership. The mothership eventually began abducting locations off of the map, and Slone decided to launch a final attack on the invaders. The aliens were notified of the IO's base on the map and went to abduct it. Slone planted hundreds of bombs in the base before it was taken up and launched Operation Skyfire to ensure the destruction of the mothership. In doing so, she betrayed the Loopers and unleashed a malevolent force beyond her power to fight. 

Chapter 2: Season 8

The Last Reality had arrived. After sending a Cube that failed to corrupt the original island, the Last Reality used the destruction of the mothership as a Trojan Horse to rain corruption cubes all over the island, though one of them was the Rebooted Cube that was beneficial to Loopers by restoring their shields. The Cubes created pocket dimensions known as the Sideways, where Sideways weapons could be found, along with a return of Cube monsters. A golden cube also landed on the island and began to rotate around the area, activating other corruption cubes in its wake. These cubes spawned smaller cubes, all of which began marching towards the center of the island. 

 

On October 5th, the leader of the Last Reality emerged from the Golden Cube and began to use the Cubes to build the Convergence over the center of the map. 

The Cube Queen unleashed her most powerful creatures on the island, Caretakers that existed in their own pocket dimension as they roamed the island destroying everything in their wake. The Convergence slowly built up, with the Cube Queen hovering over it all as it grew. Meanwhile, Doctor Slone, now openly hostile to the Loopers after betraying them, slowly wound her way to a previously locked IO base in the mountains in the southeast of the island. Her intent was not to fight the Last Reality, but seemed content to abandon the Loopers to their fate. 

The Cube Queen formed the Pyramid on November 16th and corruption radiated out of it over the whole island. The Loopers began making a ramshackle base to the north of the Pyramid as it was clear the Cube Queen was going to begin her final assault to corrupt the island for good. On December 4th, the assault commenced. 

 

Chapter 3: Season 1

In a desperate bid to save the island from the Last Reality's invasion, the Seven flipped the Island over, revealing another island embedded in the underside of Apollo, this one named Artemis. When the Zero Point regenerated the island following the Black Hole, it made one island with some original named locations, but created an entirely separate island underneath it with other named locations from Athena (the original island). The Imagined Order did not know Artemis existed, but the Seven had made their home there. 

 

For a time, peace reigned on the island. The Last Reality had been expunged, though their infrastructure was still embedded on the remnants of Apollo beneath the waves. The Imagined Order took some time to reorganize, but during the course of the first season, they began to move their operations to the new island. Doctor Slone was the first to breach the new island, followed by a few teams of Imagined Order drill teams. Towards the end of the season, earthquakes began to rock the island, creating sinkholes and destroying a Seven outpost. It heralded the full invasion of a vengeful Imagined Order, which began on March 20th, 2022

Chapter 3: Season 2

The Imagined Order swiftly seized control of much of the island and crippled the Loopers by disabling building for a time. The Seven rallied the Loopers, however, and slowly they began to seize control of the island. They did this in pitched battles over named locations where an Imagined Order dirigible was located, with each battle ending in victory for the Loopers with the dirigible destroyed. 

 

Eventually, the Imagined Order retained control only over their mountain base at Covert Cavern, and Loot Lake. However, they had a Doomsday device known as the Collider, which was created to use the Zero Point to obliterate life on the island in order to allow the Imagined Order to start over the Loop without such unruly subjects. 

 

Unknown to the Imagined Order initially, the Seven had reestablished contact with the Paradigm, an excommunicated member of the Seven as she had aided the Imagined Order by piloting the mech during the Final Showdown event. The mech, which had flown off into space after destroying the Devourer, was repaired on the Seven's base on the Ice Moon outside of the Loop. On June 4th, 2022, the Mech was ready for battle. 

Chapter 3: Season 3

The Imagined Order was destroyed and the Zero Point was set free from their control. The Loopers began a massive celebration, even as a strange biome overran the southwest part of Artemis. During the Collision, the Zero Point had been damaged and a malevolent force reached out to the island through the Zero Point to plant the Reality Tree. Over the season, the Reality Tree began to spread its roots over the island, changing named locations and revealing some of the stored matter in the Zero Point in these areas. 

 

The Seven was alarmed at the changes throughout the island and launched an investigation. One by one, the remaining members of the Seven on the island disappeared and a mysterious, shiny substance began to spill onto the island. 

 

Chapter 3: Season 4

Chrome began to overrun the island, consuming locations first altered by the Reality Tree. The Herald, a member of the Last Reality, controlled the chrome and used it to consume three members of the Seven. The Paradigm escaped to her original reality, however, in order to come up with a way to defeat the Herald. 

 

The chrome overran the island much in the same way that Cube corruption did to the previous island. The chrome has been winding its way to the Reality Tree, which as a conduit of the Zero Point, contains enough power to potentially destroy the island. The Paradigm reemerged at the end of the season and told the Loopers she had a plan to save them...

 

Concerts

Fortnite has had a number of major concerts and a few smaller ones. The first one was hosted by Marshmello in Chapter 1: Season 7, Travis Scott hosted Astronomical in Chapter 2: Season 2, and Ariana Grande hosted the Rift Tour in Chapter 2: Season 7. 

Map Changes

This final video shows how the map has changed over the years. 

On my Savant Tendencies

 While having autism has caused me no shortage of grief in my life, there is one distinct positive benefit from it. I have savant syndrome, an exceedingly rare variant of autism that is estimated to occur in about 1 in one million people. 

Though it was not known it was part of autism until much later, it was apparent I was exceedingly skilled at math at a very young age. I tested for fifth grade level math in the second grade, for example. In truth, during school it was a wasted talent, mainly due to my poor study skills. I also got in trouble for never showing my work on my homework because I would just do it all in my head. 

In high school, however, being able to do math as quickly as I could proved to be a tremendous boon in Scholar's Bowl competitions. Math questions usually required 30 or 45 seconds; if it was something I knew how to do I only needed 5. In our State Championship win in 2010, I answered two math questions in such fashion, which tied the match for us and set up one of my teammates to nail the championship winning question later in the match. 

Dates and times are also a specialty of mine. I instinctively know obscure time conversions (i.e. the number of minutes in a week) that allows me to make very specific countdowns in my head. I once counted down a new year by the minute from over two months out. A later skill I developed involved calendar dates. As a parlor trick, I started telling people what day of the week their birthday would be on in the coming year. Going a bit further than that, I started being able to tell people what day of the week they were born on, regardless of how far back it goes. 

How do I do this all in my head? With the calendar dates, there is a formula at least, as with the countdowns. But as far as actually doing the calculations in my head, it is hard to describe exactly what happens. It's just something I'm able to do reflexively, like breathing. 

Then we have my memory. My memory stretches so far back I have at least one distinct memory of being in diapers. I remember being in preschool fairly well, specific dates of things I did in kindergarten (I spiked at 105.3 degree fever on Sunday, May 3rd, 1998, for example), and so on. I could tell you the last 25 Super Bowl champions and the losing team, and could probably go back further with some application. I know offhand the last 35 NCAA Men's Basketball champions and rattle off other obscure tournament occurrences. 

I still remember questions from my days in Scholar's Bowl over 12 years ago now. One of those math questions I answered in that State Championship game was calculating the first 10 numbers not divisible by 3. The answer was 75. One particular amusing moment was in January 2009 when I interrupted "This 1964 Disney movie..." and answered it correctly "Mary Poppins". My first question I ever answered in high school occurred in October 2006  and was about the Battle of Shiloh. 

Birthdays, anniversaries, specific events on a given date all come as instinctively to me as breathing. The savant tendencies are an inseparable part of my mind and in a time where my emotions were in delayed development, I saw the world more through numbers than through normal social skills. Even as I approach 30 and my more autistic symptoms become more muted, my savant tendencies remain as strong as ever and I enjoy having it. 

Other aspects of having autism however, are and were less enjoyable. That I will discuss later.    

On How I Learned I Had Autism

 This post is part of a series of stories leading up to my next book 'The Journey Home'. 

I stared at the computer screen. I almost could not believe what I was reading. There, in the midst of the worst time of my life, the whole truth about my life was laid bare. It was in that moment I was forced to admit that I had autism. 

What led to this exact moment? It was a tortuous time in my life when I was out by myself, in the midst of the coldest winter of my life when I was struggling mightily to find purpose in anything at all. I went on one of my patented late night Internet trawls and found an answer to a mystery that had pervaded my entire life: why did I never feel like I belonged?

In 2013, I was in a bad relationship that was putting tremendous strain on my connection with my family. In June of that year, I abruptly told my parents I was moving out in less than a week to live on my then girlfriend's parents' property. My aunt Dana took me out to lunch and tried to make me realize what I was doing to my family by continuing that relationship. 

I don't remember any of that conversation except for one thing: "I wouldn't be surprised if you were on the spectrum."

Dana Olsen holds a Master's in Special Education and works as a teacher working with autistic children. She helped my mother in watching my siblings and I as we grew up as our mother worked her hardest to support us as a single parent. She would have recognized patterns and behaviors from her students that mirrored things I had done in years and decades past. 

I didn't believe her. 

I moved out, broke off that relationship two months later, then spent a long year trying to make it work by myself as a student at the University of Kansas at a dead end job that consumed more of my time than it ought to have, failed a class I shouldn't have, and entered a very dark place in my life. 

In February of 2014, I was going through the motions of a History degree and planning my return back home. Moving out had been a catastrophe, I was single at a time I had grown up thinking I'd be ready to get married, feeling more ashamed of myself than I ever had before, and trying to make sense of it all. Nothing I had planned for myself had come to fruition. So what was left?

I ended up on Wikipedia. I looked up "Autism" on there. In the past, I was aware autism existed but did not have an inkling what was meant by it. For me it was an idle curiosity that I did not know anything about and could not be bothered to learn more. Maybe that idle curiosity was a sign because as I read that page, I was forced into a corner. The behaviors described on that page were the exact same kind of behaviors I had engaged in my entire life. 

The amount of shame I had felt up that point was nothing compared to the horror I felt in that moment. I had always spent my life trying to fit in and could never quite seem to make it work. One particular incident will be reflected on in another post. In that moment, however, I was forced to admit that I was different than those around me and it was something that had been out of my control my entire life. Maybe in happier times I might have dealt with it better. In that moment though, it nearly crushed me.

It took me some time to come to terms with this diagnosis. In the year following my return to Wichita, I got an official diagnosis and worked through a lot of issues related to having autism with a therapist for several months. Still, I did not publicly admit I had autism for a full 14 months after I found out I had it. 

In the seven years since I admitted publicly I have autism, I have not been shy about it. If it comes up, I'll admit to it. After all, even years after the fact there are still things I say and do that would come across as strange to others. But as I'm on the doorstep of turning 30, I find myself not caring as much as I used to about conforming my behavior to fit in better, despite it being much easier to do so now than as I was growing up. 

This story is reflected in my book, The Journey Home. Over the next few weeks before it releases, I'll continuing sharing anecdotes and experiences of my life that have been shaped by having autism.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey (2018)

 The most recent release in the Assassin's Creed series before Valhalla is released this week was Assassin's Creed Odyssey. It was released for Windows, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch on October 5th, 2018. 

Plot

Odyssey is set against the backdrop of the Peloponnesian War, where the player experiences the war as either Kassandra or Alexios, a brother and sister who are grandchildren of King Leonidas of Sparta. The misthios, as they are known, lives on Kefalonia away from the brewing war and dealing with a local warlord. They are approached by a wealthy man, Elpenor, who tasks the misthios with assassinating a Spartan general known as the Wolf. 

The misthios recalls that the Wolf was their father. They had an infant sibling that was ordered to be sacrificed by the Oracle and the misthios had killed a man by trying to stop their sibling from being killed. The Wolf, who's real name is Nikolaos, had thrown the misthios off of a cliff for the crime. The misthios goes to confront Nikolaos, who reveals that he is not their father and that their mother is still alive. 

The misthios goes after Elpenor, who flees. They track him down and kill him, taking a disguise he had to infiltrate a meeting Elpenor was going to. There, the misthios discovers the Cult of Kosmos (a stand in for the Templars as the Order of the Ancients was in Origins) and that their sibling is still alive, having been taken in by the Cult and conditioned into serving them as the "demigod" Deimos. 

The misthios works to eradicate the Cult, enlisting allies such as the historian Herodotus and Pericles. They also search for their mother and find her in command of an island out in the Aegean Sea. Myrinne tells them that their real father is Pythagoras and invites them to try to find him. The misthios finds Pythagoras in holed up in Atlantis, kept alive well past his normal lifespan by a Precursor artifact known as the Staff of Hermes. 

Pythagoras sends the misthios to gather several Precursor artifacts so he could seal Atlantis once and for all. They oblige him and convince him to give up the Staff so Atlantis can stay sealed forever. Pythagoras dies as a result and the misthios seals Atlantis. 

Back in the war, the misthios is unable to stop Deimos from killing the Athenian leader Pericles, and his rival Cleon takes power in Athens. Cleon is a ranking member of the Cult, however, and the misthios kills him in retaliation. 

With the Cult largely broken, the misthios and Myrinne go to confront Deimos, where they can either fight him or get them to stand down. Afterwards, the misthios can return to the meeting place of the Cult and interact with a Precursor artifact there to show visions of the future. The leader of the Cult is revealed as well as Pericles' wife, Aspasia, who thanks the misthios for destroying the Cult as it had gone far beyond what she envisioned. The player can either kill or let Aspasia live. 

In the modern story, Layla Hassan is looking for the Staff of Hermes and using the information gathered from reliving the misthios' memories, gains access to Atlantis. There she finds the misthios, who had been kept alive by the Staff of Hermes over the past 2400 years. They give Layla the Staff, saying that the world needs both order and chaos and that she is prophesied to maintain that balance. 

Gameplay

This game is undeniably massive. Where Origins game map was roughly 80 square kilometers, Odyssey is 256 square kilometers, roughly half of which is open sea. The player can explore the Greek mainland all the way up to Macedonia and the islands that make up the Aegean Sea as far south as Crete. 

Naval combat returns as an integral part of the game for the first time since Rogue (it was present in Origins, but only as part of certain quests). The player can use the ship to fight in naval battles between Athens and Sparta, along with exploring the various islands of the Greek world. 

Each region is either under Athenian or Spartan control and the player and aid or hinder either side by attacking enemy camps, assassinating regional commanders, and fighting in conquest battles. Several of these battles are tied into the main storyline as well. 

Where Origins improved armor through crafting upgrades and the player could change weapons freely, in Odyssey the player can freely exchange both weapons and armor. The best weapons and armor can be obtained by killing Cult members. Weapons and armor can be upgraded with the player's level, though it can be expensive as they require materials such as iron and cedarwood. Eagle Vision again returns in the form of an actual eagle, this time named Ikaros. 

The wanted system makes a return in this game for the first time since Rogue. A ladder of sorts exists with other mercenaries in the Greek world and committing illegal actions will draw in attacks from other mercenaries. However, killing these mercenaries will advance the player up the rankings, which unlocks bonuses like discounts in item shops. 

Hunting Cult members is a massive undertaking on its own. There are 43 Cult members across the Greek world, all of which are revealed by discovering clues in the world. The Cult is divided up into several categories, all of which is headed by a high level leader. 

There are over a hundred side quests unrelated to the main campaign, that range from carrying out local contracts to hunting down boss animals all over Greece. Mythological aspects make their way into the game as well, as part of the Atlantis storyline sees the player fighting the Cyclops, the Minotaur, Medusa, and getting challenged to a battle of riddles with the Sphinx. 

As mentioned before, levelling returns in this game, though the skill tree is not as expansive as it was in Origins. The abilities, however, take on a more mythological bend, in that the player can avoid all fall damage (which is something I did not mind after all the times I fell to my death in the last ten games), along with being able to use overpowered attacks and gaining the ability to have a permanent flaming sword. 

Thoughts

I'm an overall fan of bigger, more epic experiences. Avengers: Endgame is three hours long? Sign me up. I own all of the extended Lord of the Rings movies, the last of which is four hours and twenty minutes long. The first time I played through Origins, I spent 66 hours on it. Odyssey was at least a hundred. One of the general criticism was how massive the game was, but that was not a concern for me. 

I liked the return to full naval gameplay as well. Naturally triremes were a bit more unwieldy to sail as opposed to the eighteenth century vessels of III, Black Flag, and Rogue, but it was endearing to be able to split a ship in half after crippling it by throwing javelins and firing arrows at it. 

This game was largely predicated on player choice, something that was not present in any game before. I could choose to kill or spare certain adversaries, pursue any relationship I pleased, or simply get into philosophical debates with Sophocles any time I wanted. 

Still though, it did not really feel like an Assassin's Creed game, even more so than Black Flag, mainly because the setting was so far back in time it preceded everything familiar about the Assassin's Brotherhood, including the Hidden Blade. With Valhalla being set in the 800s, I don't expect this to be that much of an issue the next time around. 

Assassin' Creed Origins (2017)

 Following a year off from releasing a new game in the series, Ubisoft released Assassin's Creed Origins on October 27, 2017 for PS4, Xbox One, and Windows. 

Plot

Layla Hassan is working in Egypt at the behest of Abstergo to locate an artifact in the desert. Instead, Hassan finds the mummified remains of Bayek and Aya, two members of a precursor group to the Assassins known as the Hidden Ones. Despite not having clearance, Layla uses the DNA from the mummies to look into their lives with an Animus she modified herself. 

In Ptolemaic Egypt, Bayek is the last Medjay, a person who was traditionally charged with the protection of the Pharaoh, but in Bayek's time had been extended to protecting all of Egypt. Bayek resides in Siwa, which houses a Precursor vault. Bayek and his son Khemu are abducted by masked men only known by animal names (The Heron, the Ibis, etc). The masked men want to get into the vault, but when Bayek tries to fight back, Khemu is killed. 

A year later, Bayek has been hunting the five masked men, having first killed the one known as the Heron. He arrives back in Siwa and kills the Ibis, who had been torturing the residents of Siwa to get information on the Vault. He learns his wife, Aya, is in Alexandria hunting other masked men. Bayek learns she has killed the Vulture and the Ram, and she is currently tracking the Snake. She gives Bayek a Hidden Blade and sends him after the Snake. 

Bayek discovers that the Snake is Ptolemy's royal scribe and ambushes him with the Hidden Blade. It costs Bayek his finger to use the blade, but the scribe is killed. The scribe indicates that there is more to the masked men besides the five that Bayek and Aya killed. Bayek seeks more information and gets into contact with Cleopatra, the sister of the current Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII. She tells Bayek that there are more masked men, who are known as the Order of Ancients. The scribe Bayek killed was not known as the Snake, but rather the Hippo. 

She points Bayek in the direction of other masked men, which included the Scarab, the Hyena, the Crocodile, and the Lizard. Bayek assassinates all four of them while Aya works to secure help for Cleopatra from the Roman general Pompey. She sends a letter to Bayek to let him know there are two other members of the Order, the Jackal and the Scorpion. 

Bayek finds that the Jackal is Lucius Septimius, a Roman stationed in Alexandria charged with protecting the royal family. Septimius kills Pompey before he can aid Cleopatra. Instead, Bayek and Aya sneak Cleopatra into the royal palace in Alexandria to get her into contact with another Roman, Julius Caesar. Caesar is impressed with Cleopatra and allies with her. Bayek kills the Scorpion but is stopped from killing Septimius by Caesar, who claims he will face Roman justice for Pompey's death. Ptolemy is killed trying to flee and Cleopatra becomes Pharaoh. 

Cleopatra and Caesar break from Aya and Bayek, who find that both have been seduced by the Order. They find that the Order is showing interest in Alexander the Great's tomb in Alexandria and go to investigate. They find Aya's ally Apollodorus mortally wounded there, but he manages to tell them that Septimius and the leader of the Order, Flavius (the Lion) are headed to Siwa to open the Vault. 

Bayek arrives to find the vault already opened and the town held in thrall by an Apple of Eden. Bayek kills Flavius, but Septimius had already gone to Rome. Aya and Bayek agree to separate for good, with Aya going to Rome to grow a brotherhood there while Bayek remains in Egypt. A few years later Aya tracks down Septimius and finally kills him, assassinates Caesar, and threatens Cleopatra. 

In the present, Layla is ambushed by Abstergo mercenaries for not reporting in. She is able to defeat them all and continue exploring Bayek and Aya's past. After she is done, she wakes to find William Miles, who offers to let her join the Assassins. She agrees to go with him, but stops short of joining the Assassins. 

Gameplay

Following Syndicate, Ubisoft decided to take a year off from the series to completely overhaul it. Where single cities served as the focus of previous games, with loading screen waits to travel between regions, the whole of Egypt serves as this game's map. A player could conceivably travel from one end of Egypt to the other without stopping, though it would take time due to the size of the map. 

The major cities include Alexandria, Memphis, Siwa, and Cyrene, along with smaller towns. The map is focused on the west bank of the Nile and points further west, as Cyrene and Siwa are in Libya technically. The mini map of every other game in this series is gone, replaced by a compass bar that picks up locations and quests from a certain distance out. 

Combat was overhauled as well, switching from the "locked in" format of past games and switching to a free for all combat format. The player can use knives, swords, spears, axes, and maces, all of which have their advantages and disadvantages. A bow serves as a ranged weapon and the player can use tools such as throwing fire bombs. 

The player can upgrade their armor or attack stats with upgrades. Materials for the upgrades are gathered through hunting, which returns in this game, and attacking military transports. Levelling the player continues in this game and levelling up grants ability points that can be spent on increasing player skills, such as unlocking chain assassinations. 

Locations have been overhauled in this game as well. Instead of clearing up towns district by district, picking up collectibles and completing side activities to take districts over, the whole map of Egypt is divided up by region, with each region having locations within it to explore, such as tombs and military camps. 

Collectibles are tremendously cut down in this game. There are chests, ancient tablets in tombs, papyrus scrolls in temples, and that's all. Finding these will complete a location, along with killing officers in the military camps. These collectibles are most easily discovered with the revamped Eagle Vision of this game, which utilizes a literal eagle named Senu to scout out locations. 

There are far more side quests than main mission quests, and most of them are related to Medjay duties in serving people and dispensing justice. Due to actions early in the game, special boss characters known as Phylakes hunt the player, and killing them all unlocks a reward. There are several elephants in the game as well and defeating an elephant will grant an ability point. 

Thoughts

I am probably one of the few who thought the series was not getting stale after nine games of relatively similar gameplay, but I still appreciated the changes the series made for this one. Egypt is vast and I enjoyed exploring it, even the remoteness of the desert. The level of detail of Egypt's landscape is unreal and I easily felt the harshness of the scenery. 

The new format of the game reminded me strongly of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, in that it was more of an RPG as opposed to an Assassin's Creed game. The vast number of side quests kind of buries the main storyline to the point where I don't recall much of the main story after the first playthrough. What I remembered most about my first playthrough is the great atmosphere this game built. It is not just the landscape, it's the political tension you can feel in the game as well. 

At the time, Egypt is controlled by the Greeks as the remnants of Hellenic empires struggle to remain afloat. Everywhere you can see Egyptians losing status at the expense of the ruling Greeks, with no small outbreak of violence due to it, especially in the Faiyum region. Then, on top of all that, there is the looming threat of the Roman Republic, who's presence in the game steadily increases the further into the main story the player goes. 

This game seemed much larger on the first playthrough simply because it was the biggest game that the series had released up to that point. On the second playthrough that I am going through now, it does not seem nearly as vast. That is because of the next game in the series took big to an entirely new level. 

On the State of the 2020 Presidential Race and why Trump will (probably) Win

Donald Trump and Joe Biden at the second Presidential debate on October 22nd, image from Newsweek

If a meteorologist told you it was snowing, but you looked outside and saw it was sunny, would you believe him?

The science of meteorology is naturally much better now than when that adage was made, but it can still be used in reference to political polls for really the last decade. In 2012, national polling showed Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in a virtual tie nationally before Obama won comfortably with a 3.9% win. In 2014, polls showed a toss up in the Senate ahead of a Republican wave that saw the GOP gain nine seats. In 2016, well, you know. In 2018, polling was much better, but still had two huge misses in Florida's Senate and Governor's races. 

Polling is an inexact science, which is doubly true in the Age of Donald Trump. While Joe Biden has been leading in nearly every poll, my estimation based on other factors paints a much different picture than what can be gleaned from just the polls. I held a similar view in 2016 and it turned out to be the correct view, so I'm doubling down this year and saying President Trump will be reelected. 

To be clear, this is not a speculation of why people support Trump or Biden and not the other candidate. This is merely a reflection of what I'm seeing beyond the polls

Primary Results

One of the reasons I suspected a Trump victory in the offing the first time around was due to his performance in the primaries. Back then, he received a record 14 million votes in the Republican primary. Trump seemed to excite voters in a way that neither McCain nor Romney was able to. It was not that Trump was receiving those votes, it was that they were participating in the primaries specifically to vote for him as nearly 12 million more voters participated in the 2016 Republican primaries vs the 2012 edition. 

In the full primary era, which is after 1976, no President has even received more votes in an uncontested primary in their second election. George Bush in 1992 received more primary votes than in 1988, but he was facing steep competition (for an incumbent President). Even popular Presidents like Reagan (17% decrease from 1980 to 1984), Clinton (a 7.5% decrease from 1992 in 1996), Bush (yes, he was popular among Republicans in 2004, but still saw a 35% decrease from 2000), and Obama (a 65% decrease in 2012 from 2008) all received fewer votes in their incumbent primary campaign and all four were reelected, all but one rather comfortably. 

In 2020, Donald Trump bucked this trend in staggering fashion. He received over 18 million votes in this primary, a nearly 30% increase from his 2016 total. Given the environment this occurred in, this is beyond unprecedented. Incumbent Presidents put no effort into their primary campaigns normally and for the most part, Trump did not either outside of a few rallies here and there before the coronavirus lockdowns started. In such cases, voters simply do not turn up at a primary for an incumbent President because everyone knows the incumbent President will be re-nominated. 

On top of this, eight states (Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Kansas, Nevada, New York, South Carolina, and Virginia) did not hold primaries in the first place as opposed to every state holding a caucus or primary in 2016. Slightly less than half of the primaries were held after the coronavirus lockdowns began as well. So despite people not having a reason to come out and vote since he was nominally unopposed, despite several states not having a primary at all, and despite the pandemic, Trump saw a 30% increase in primary votes in 2020 from 2016. There is simply no precedent for this because it's never happened in an uncontested primary before. It indicates that enthusiasm for Trump is still tremendous among Republicans, something that's not reflected in the polling (more on that later)

On the Democrat side, based on the first two primaries, Joe Biden should not even be the nominee. Biden finished 4th in Iowa and 5th in New Hampshire. He then finished a distant second in Nevada before finally breaking through in South Carolina and then outperforming expectations on Super Tuesday. To put it bluntly, Democrat leaders panicked when Bernie Sanders attained front runner status after winning New Hampshire and Nevada. 

Other ostensibly moderate candidates Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar were forced out in between South Carolina and Super Tuesday, leaving the moderate wing solely to Biden while the progressive wing was still split between Elizabeth Warren and Sanders. How much of this influenced the results of Super Tuesday cannot be quantified, but it had to have been substantial since despite all of this happening in a matter of 48 hours, Klobuchar and Buttigieg received less than a combined 10% in a given Super Tuesday race after averaging a combined 20-35% in the previous four races. 

This left Biden with the frontrunner status following Super Tuesday. The coronavirus lockdowns happened soon afterwards, which left Bernie Sanders unable to actively campaign to make up for the Super Tuesday shortfall. He suspended his campaign on April 8th, leaving Biden unopposed. Biden ended up receiving 19 million votes in the primary, a Democratic record. The 37 million voters cast in the primary overall is also a record. 

What is telling here in the percentage of the vote that Joe Biden received after April 8th, when he was running unopposed as Donald Trump was. Overall, Trump received 94% of the primary vote while running unopposed. When Joe Biden ran unopposed, he received a comparatively paltry 76% of the primary vote.

The Fall Campaign

Whether it is wise or not during the pandemic, Donald Trump is actively campaigning across the country, making visits from Maine to California and focusing heavily on Florida, North Carolina, and the Upper Midwest since he recovered from the coronavirus. His campaign has spurned TV ads for the most part, instead spending its money on a vast door to door campaign that is more focused on voter engagement. Unlike 2016, the Trump campaign has a massive number of 

By comparison, the Biden campaign has limited appearances and focused more on a digital approach. The campaign went until the end of August before announcing visits by the candidate in fall battleground states and it was not until October before the Biden campaign began to establish a door to door campaign. Usually when a campaign changes game plans halfway through a campaign, it is because they are seeing signs that they may be in trouble. It is not hard to see where the trouble lay either. 

In terms of voter registrations, Republicans heavily outgained Democrats in new registrations in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida. This can be attributable to the "get out the vote" effort on part of the Trump campaign as I believe it is far more effective to engage a voter in person than through impersonal means such as ads or cold calls. Democrats must have sensed this too, since these registration numbers are not exactly a secret, and responded to make up the shortfall. 

That still leaves the lack of engagement on the part of the candidate himself. As of this moment, Biden has one scheduled visit in Georgia during this last week of the campaign. Trump by comparison is visiting Nebraska (the swing 2nd district), Wisconsin, and Michigan in one day this week. 

Another way Trump has been able to get his message out is through social media, where he commands 87 million followers on Twitter and 30 million on Facebook. Joe Biden, by comparison, has a mere 11 million followers on Twitter and 3 million on Facebook, which leads me to my next point. 

Enthusiasm Gap

If you thought Trump's enthusiasm gap over Clinton was bad, the gap between Trump and Biden is miles worse. Going back to the aforementioned rallies, Trump cannot hold the epic sized rallies he had back in 2016 due to coronavirus restrictions, so what his rallies have been doing is having small (for him) rallies in the open air at areas such as airport hangars. Every single one of them he has held has been full regardless, even in states like New Hampshire, Nevada, and Maine, states he did not win last time. 

Biden's in-person events, when he has them, are miniscule in comparison. Biden can never get more than a couple hundred people to come to one of his rallies, even in formerly safe Democratic states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. His surrogates are not doing any better, as shown by this Kamala Harris rally earlier today. Even Barack Obama, who was to Democrats during his Presidency what Trump is to Republicans now, could not draw more than 400 people to a rally in Philadelphia. 

This is not a recent problem for Biden; he was drawing crowds in the hundreds during the primaries while opponents such as Sanders and Warren were drawing in tens of thousands. We have already seen the danger that lies for Biden with the lack of enthusiasm; the evidence lays with his nearly campaign killing finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire earlier this year. 

Beyond that, there is a stunning groundswell of support for Donald Trump that is occurring organically. For the better part of this year, Trump supporters have been organizing parades by boat and by car without any help from the campaign itself to show support for the President, such as this massive display of support for Trump in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. They are not just happening in areas you would expect either; there have been multiple Trump rallies in Beverly Hills and even one in New York City this past weekend. 

While there have been pro-Biden rallies of a similar nature, they have again been small in comparison and far less numerous than the Trump rallies. Just take these dueling rallies in Arizona for example, a state that many are projecting to lean towards Biden. 

Due to a lack of excitement for Biden himself, it stands to reason that his support is more about opposing Trump than supporting Biden. As for how that kind of vote goes, just ask John Kerry in 2004 and Mitt Romney in 2012. 

Minority Outreach

One of the reasons that Hillary Clinton lost was because her campaign took blue collar voters in the Upper Midwest for granted while Trump actively courted them. While Biden is "trying" to win those voters back (he will not), Trump set his sights on a different demographic that favors Democrats: Hispanics and Blacks. 

As mentioned before, the Trump campaign has a very well organized ground campaign focused on voter outreach. It is not just focused on his base; it is reaching out to minority voters as well. Despite the racial unrest this year since the death of George Floyd, the Trump campaign is actively reaching out to the Black community. There are signs of support among Latinos for Trump as well. 

What is interesting is that this slight uptick in minority support is actually reflected in the polls. Several polls show Black support for Trump in the teens to around 20%. It does not sound like much of anything, until you remember Trump received around 8% of the Black vote in 2016. If Trump's support among Blacks has actually doubled, it becomes very hard for Biden to win states like Michigan and Wisconsin. 

As for Latinos, weak support for Biden (see enthusiasm gap) has him in trouble among that group. This will spell doom for Biden in states such as Texas, Arizona, and especially Florida where the large contingent of Cuban Americans living there have a deep mistrust of Biden. 

The Polls

It is often what is unreported about polling that is often the most telling. After 2016, there was much talk about the "shy Trump voter" effect. This asks the question whether there are Trump supporters who are not counted in polling because they do not respond to polling inquiries. One pollster (who had Trump winning in 2016 and again this time) certainly thinks so and explains his reasoning here. 

Another important key question from Gallup asks if voters think they are better off now than they were four years ago. In 2012, 45% said yes ahead of Obama's reelection. This year, 56% said yes. This would indicate that people seem to think Trump's policies are working out well for them even if they do not agree with his personality. Trump may have helped himself in that regard by acting more calmly and measured in last week's debate. 

Perhaps the polls are right. Maybe Joe Biden is heading for a comfortable, 2012-esque Democrat win. But if you had no polls at all and could only look at the race as it is; you would think Trump is heading for a landslide. I'm going to hedge my bet and say Trump wins a close one similar to 2016, though a landslide certainly would not surprise me. 

As a final note; early voting results are useless as they only tell how many people of which party has already voted, not how they actually voted. Democrats lead in early voting, but that was expected given that Democrats favored vote by mail and Republicans favored Election Day in-person voting. Democrats also led in early voting in 2016; look at how that turned out. That being said, it is telling that an estimated 25% of early voters did not vote in 2016. If that 25% share of first time voters is any way reflective of the lead in voter registration Republicans have in multiple battleground states, Election Night (my favorite night every two years) will be very short indeed.