Fortnite Chapter 1 Map Return Is All But Confirmed

After many months of rumors and hearsay about what would happen at the end of Fortnite Chapter 4, we’re very close now to Season 5. It just may not be the Season 5 you were expecting, because it’s pretty much confirmed at this point that the next season of Fortnite, which will begin on November 3, will put us on a new version of the Battle Royale map from Chapter 1 Season 5.

There have been so many rumors about this upcoming season, which is expected to last just a month before Chapter 5 begins in December. But the picture has started to come into focus in recent weeks. And we got as close to a confirmation of these plans when a content creator named Salvatretzzo posted about a package he received from Epic.

The package, as you can see, includes several pins themed after Chapter 1 Seasons 5 through 10 (X), as well as a new one that simply says Fortnite OG, a dog tag with that same Fortnite OG logo, a vinyl single that plays the old lobby theme and which has the Season 5 map etched into the underside, and a screen that plays an old video of the recipient playing Fortnite during the original Season 5.

It’s likely that Salvatretzzo jumped the gun and revealed his box before he was supposed to, because it’s been several days and no one else has posted theirs. But it’s only a matter of time, because Epic would have sent out a bunch of these.

While the broad strokes seem pretty well set, there had been some discussion among the various Fortnite leakers regarding the specifics of what’s coming. Though things seem settled now: You should expect to see the Chapter 1 Season 5 map as it existed, with the only significant changes being added movement infrastructure like ziplines added for Zero Build players. On top of that, there should be an old school loot pool–all these cool recent guns are going bye bye in favor of the old-timey stuff.

And while Zero Build will stick around, Season 5 could remove all the modern movement mechanics like sprinting, mantling and sliding that were added in Chapter 3, which seems like it might be pretty annoying.

Don’t expect the map to stay in Season 5, though. It’s expected that the map will change dramatically over the course of this one-month season, updating frequently to reflect big changes that happened over the rest of Chapter 1–that’s six seasons to cover in four weeks, so this should be pretty wild..

While I’ve complained about the flow of Fortnite’s story, or lack thereof, just recently, the story quests this season have been building toward this by introducing Kado Thorne’s time machine at the start of the season, and then having us heist it and move it to Frenzy Farm. Now, the time machine is currently pointed at July 12, 2018–the first day of Chapter 1 Season 5–and it’s been spitting out Chapter 1 objects. There’s every reason to think we’re going back.

While we’re pretty confident we know the basics about next season, there’s a ton we don’t. There have been rumors earlier this year of both a Doctor Who collab and a Lego collab tied to this shortened season–Doctor Who would make all sorts of sense for a time travel plot, and Lego would make sense with a constantly changing map. But those rumors have dried up completely, and there’s been no recent word about any collabs for Season 5. The Lego collab, for what it’s worth, is definitely happening and has been discussed openly by Epic. It just may not be happening during this next, uncommonly structured season.

Will this baby-sized season have a battle pass? Will it be full of remixed skins from Chapter 1? These are questions we have no clues about. But Season 5 is less than two weeks away now, so we won’t have to wait too long to find out.