Battle royale style games had taken something that a lot of Team Versus Team games had and removed it. That thing being removed was respawn. The games made sure that your characters death was permanent inside that world and if you wanted to keep playing, you would have to go join a new lobby. This is common in these battle royale games such as Fortnite, Realm Royale, and PUBG.
However, when Apex Legends came around, the new battle royale game, it brought that respawn back. Though it wasn’t just a timer counting down before appearing in a safe area (like in Overwatch), but in fact something you had to seek out. These respawn beacons allowed you to revive a fallen, or all fallen, teammates and keep the fight going. This was the first battle royale to bring something in like this, and Fortnite: Battle Royale saw that it wanted something like that in their game too. So they’re introducing The Reboot Vans.
This was hinted back at the end of February, but spoken in recent Dev Update, the Reboot Van has been officially added. The Reboot Van works very similar to how the Apex Legends’ respawn beacon in that when a teammate bites the dust, in any which way, players can go pick up their reboot card. This reboot card can be taken over to a Reboot Van, slotted in, and revive the teammate to keep the fight going. However, respawned teammates will come back into the fight without any of their equipment or weapons, so they will need some help defending themselves until they can get to that point. However, once the Reboot Van is used, it can’t be used again for an allotted amount of time. And when the van is used, there will be an alarm that goes off to alert any nearby players to your location. It’s either worth a shot, or it’s worth your life.
So the Reboot Card and Reboot Van works almost nearly exactly like the Apex Legends’ teammate flag and respawn beacon. Fortnite may have had some controversies around all of the suing and such, but it is quick to jump on trends and how to use them to their advantage. And that’s exactly what they’re doing with these Reboot Vans.
Reboot Vans will be added in next week, either April 9 or 10 with the 8.30 patch, and there is no doubt that it’ll change the way Fortnite is played.