Today saw the release of one of the weirdest crossovers in history: Epic Games and Marvel have teamed up to introduce Thanos into Fortnite. The biggest game and the biggest movie in the world have collided in a weird and wonderful way, allowing players to take up the Infinity Gauntlet and mow down enemies.
It’s a lot of fun, if you can get ahold of the Gauntlet. It drops at random in the starting circle and whoever picks it up transforms into Thanos until they die; no easy feat considering he has a cumulative 1000 in health. If you kill Thanos, the Gauntlet is again up for grabs.
However, if you are dispatched by Thanos, which is pretty easy considering his wild abilities, you will be greeted by the following screen.
You might not catch it at first, but if you look at the bottom of the screenshot you will see the typical “Next Player” section has been replaced by “Next Boss”.
This, admittedly, could just be a visual error on Epic’s part. If you go to switch to the next boss, nothing happens. For all intents and purposes, they may have just forgotten to remove the function entirely for the Infinity Gauntlet LTM.
However, could this be suggesting that we will be seeing more Fortnite crossovers in the future? It looks likely, especially considering how lucrative this might turn out to be for the game — the MCU is the biggest thing in all of media, so Epic should capitalise on that if they can.
How would they tie in with Marvel or Infinity War, however? Well, Epic Games recently sent out a tweet acknowledging the feedback that the likelihood of players getting the chance to play as Thanos was pretty low.
We've heard your feedback and we're looking to make a few tweaks to give more players the chance to wield the Infinity Gauntlet in the new Limited Time Mash-Up!
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) May 8, 2018
The solution? The Children of Thanos, aka The Black Order. It’s speculation, but speculation that makes more sense the longer you think about it. Rather than having just one boss character in-play at a time, Fortnite could introduce the likes of Ebony Maw and Proxima Midnight as other playable bosses, but obviously with considerably less health and abilities.
The only flaw in this idea would be that matches might end far too quickly with rampaging villains flying around the map. However, as the Infinity Gauntlet should really just be viewed as throwaway fun, why not go all out and get those sweet Disney licenses?
Of course, this could just be a placeholder or a test run for future, non-Marvel tie-ins. If that’s the case and we’re going to see more crossovers, why not get Keanu Reeves’ assassin to actually be playable instead of the John Wick skin that Epic clearly aren’t contravening any copyright laws with?
All that being said, perhaps its best if Fortnite treats this as a one and done, or at least the only one for a little while. Seeing crossovers constantly could make the game feel like one big ad for other IPs, but if Rocket League can do something similar, it might just work out for them.
I guess we’ll never know until we receive official word. Unless your name is Ninja, there isn’t a chance you’re going to get anything out of Epic if you go to them directly.
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