Fortnite’s Controversial New Movement is Here to Stay, but Epic is Listening

Chapter 5 of Fortnite is now live, bringing countless collaborations and features to everyone’s favorite free-to-play battle royale game. While Epic Games has cranked up the speed of crossovers, some players feel that the game has slowed down in more important areas.

Fortnite’s movement and animation system has been completely reworked with the release of Chapter 5 Season 1, and many diehard fans are upset. Epic Games has added features called motion matching and procedural layering to Fortnite’s animations, resulting in more fluid transitions between walking, running, shooting, and everything that a Fortnite player does during a match. On current-gen consoles and PCs, physics-based animation has also been implemented for gliders. Ultimately, the new animations look much more realistic.

With their sights set on Peter Griffin and Solid Snake, Fortnite fans couldn’t wait to check out Chapter 5’s new map and features. After dropping off the battle bus, however, it was immediately clear that something was off. Players took to Reddit and social media to share their thoughts on the new movement changes, constructing elaborate side-by-side tests to show just how different everything was.

Everything is much slower now. While the sprint feature remained mostly unchanged, walking, crouching, and strafing are all significantly slower as of Chapter 5 Season 1. The feeling of slowness is exacerbated by the new, more realistic animations, too, so all the build-crazy 14-year-olds hopped up on energy drinks are feeling the nerf. The change has even led to Epic developers getting harassed by players on social media, which is sadly not a first for the online gaming community.

The uproar led to an official response from Epic Games stating that the changes are here to stay and they may take some time to get used to. The developer confirmed that running and sprinting are now slightly slower but stamina recovers more quickly, and sideways and backward movement is actually faster now. On top of that, crouching is slower but stealthier.

According to Epic, the changes were intended to encourage more strategic decision-making in each moment in addition to improving Fortnite’s visual fidelity. The changes to crouching are the best example of this, letting players sneak up on enemies more easily at the cost of slower movement speed. Despite its intentions, Epic reassured players that it is still listening to feedback but hopes that the community will take some time to adjust to the new changes.

If you’re one of the players who’s feeling the harshness of the movement changes, then Epic recommends checking your settings, particularly if you play with a keyboard and mouse. Some of your keybinds and control settings may not match well with the new changes, especially since Fortnite players now have to fight years of muscle memory to try and learn the new movement style.

Fortnite Chapter 5 Season 1 thrusts players into a conflict between the Underground and the Society, with multiple members of the latter roaming the island as boss enemies. In addition to the map changes, Chapter 5 also brings several new collaborations that are bigger than anything the game has ever seen before. There are over 1000 Lego skin variants available in-game now, and you can even get a free Lego skin by linking your Epic and Lego accounts.