Fortnite's latest season has just begun, introducing a variety of new content into the game. As with each new season, new locations, weapons, and NPCs appear, but according to a reputable Fortnite dataminer, players could be seeing a brand new mobility mechanic that could change the game's meta forever.
Epic Games' enduringly popular free-to-play battle royale title recently launched its Chapter 2 Season 8 earlier this week. The new season comes with a new Battle Pass, which features an interesting mix of skins. Seemingly taking a step back from heavy crossover skins, the Season 8 Battle Pass features largely Fortnite-original charcters like Toona Fish and Fabio Sparklemane. However, Marvel's Carnage is this season's top tier skin.
The new movement feature rumored to being added to Fortnite comes by way of reputable dataminer and leaker HYPEX. According to HYPEX, Epic Games has added a new movement type called "Sliding" as part of the game's most recent update. The move will reportedly increase players' field of vision by 15 when actively sliding, and will also shake the camera when it's being performed. The sliding manuever is also supposed to have a cooldown of two seconds. The dataminer states they don't know when the mechanic will be implemented, or whether its some type of equippable ability.
Fortnite Season 8 has already added a bit of new mobility to the island, albeit in the form of static POIs. As players are discovering, the new "Cubed" theme shows the aftermath of Season 7's Operation: Sky Fire event, which saw the destruction of the massive alien mothership. The resulting debris has created multiple areas with purple winding airstreams, as well as the return of the ghostly purple cubes. However, the sliding mechanic, item or not, could be a game-changer.
While players are hoping the rumored sliding move to be true, it isn't the only new feature being added as part of Fortnite Season 8. Building on the customizable alien Kymera skin from last season, players can collect Color Bottles and Rainbow Ink in various places throughout the island to paint their very own Toona Fish. Players can concoct their own color combos or unlock color schemes of other popular Fortnite skins.
While the sliding movement feature has yet to be confirmed by Epic Games, HYPEX has a good track record when it comes to the vast majority of Fortnite leaks. Players can also gain additional mobility right now with the new Venom and Carnage Symbiote Mythic weapon, which grants the wielder zero gravity jumps and glider re-deploy.
Fortnite is free-to-play on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One. and Xbox Series X/S.