Fortnite: Battle Royale will finally be getting a respawn system thanks to the all-new Reboot Vans that will come in next week’s update.
Fortnite developer Epic Games announced the arrival of the vans in its latest Fortnite Dev Update video, with the details brought to us by a man in a banana suit.
The Reboot Vans function as respawn stations scattered across the map that players must seek out if they want to revive a fallen teammate. This system, interestingly enough, works in the same way as the respawn system of Fortnite’s biggest rival in the battle royale arena: Apex Legends.
Much like in Apex Legends, Fortnite’s respawn system will have eliminated squadmates drop “reboot cards”, which you will need to find from the remains of your teammate and pick up in order to have any hope of bringing them back to life.
The surviving squadmates can then activate the reboot cards at any van, but these are expectedly out of the way and likely fraught with danger. It’s a risk worth taking though, for there is strength in numbers even in a battle royale game.
You won’t be able to sneakily revive your squadmates, however, as the reboot van gives off a loud audio cue and sends a beacon of light into the sky when used. It’s an understable drawback, because if it was too easy to sneak around and bring teammates back then matches would most probably never end. Using the reboot van will likely summon nearby squads to finish off the rest of your team, just as you’re trying to return to full strength.
Once the reboot process finishes successfully however, the van will need to recharge before it can be used again. While there is no telling how many vans will be available in the map, that quirk makes each one a more contestable and valuable objective for squads.
Epic did not reveal how long it takes for the reboot process to finish or for each van to recharge, so we can’t be sure how this new respawn system will work out just yet. We’ll have to wait for the update to hit next week to find out.
Inquisitive Fortnite players first caught wind of the game getting a respawn system when the reboot vans suddenly appeared shortly after Season 8 began. Epic also said that they were exploring the possibility of adding a respawn system to the game in an AMA at the Fortnite subreddit back in February.
The addition of the reboot vans seems to be aimed at reinvigorating squad play, which was gutted when the siphon mechanic was removed (health given to players for every kill), which also notably spawned the infamous ‘Revert!’ movement in the community. It remains to be seen whether it will do anything to alleviate the slog from squad play, however.
