Fortnite’s Travis Scott Concert Was A Stunning Spectacle And A Glimpse At The Metaverse

It’s genuinely laborious to explain what I simply witnessed in Fortnite, however, I’m going to strive. It was an in-game live performance that was meant to evolve on final yr’s Marshmello present, and this time, it was rapper Travis Scott doing an efficiency titled “Astronomical.” To say it was bigger in scale than final yr’s live performance might be taken fairly actually.

At the Marshmello present, everybody flocked to a stage the place the DJ, in avatar type, spun beats, and there have been cool issues that occurred like beat drops throwing everybody up within the air or disabling gravity altogether. Issues solely attainable in a online game live performance.

The Travis Scott present? It took issues to a completely new stage, and exhibits simply what number of gentle years forward of each different sport Epic is with stay occasions like this.

All week lengthy, Fortnite has been constructing a stage in the midst of an island chain within the north west of the map, just like what we noticed from Marshmello, however that turned out to be the very best joke of the night. A big planet made up of an amusement park and blasting audio system arrived from the sky with a comet orbiting it. Because it whirled round, I figured “Oh neat, Travis Scott’s gonna dive bomb the stage from the sky.

Uh, effectively.

Divebomb he did for the beat drop within the opening observe, however a 200-foot tall model of him, obliterating the stage and launching the “true” live performance, what I can greatest describe as a mammoth, interactive cutscene that allowed you to manage your participant to a sure extent, bouncing, floating, flying or at one level, swimming when your complete map was submerged in water. Travis carried out songs whereas stomping across the map like Godzilla, and after the underwater bit, issues went flat-out into outer house, concluding in a short cameo by Fortnite’s fabled crystal butterfly, which has gamers buzzing.

It was a brief present, perhaps solely 10 minutes or so, removed from the 2-Three hours you may anticipate from a traditional live performance, however it was attended by tens of hundreds of thousands and was not like something you would ever presumably hope to expertise in actual life.

I’ve talked before about Fortnite creating the “Metaverse,” a digital world the place folks go to hang around and stay, not simply play a battle royale shooter. A true model of which may be years, many years away, and but in moments like this, it seems like items of it are already right here. Tonight I attended a digital live performance dressed as Psylocke from X-Males for a well-known real-life rapper that basically destroyed your complete digital world and put it again collectively once more the course of some songs. And in our present world lockdown, it was in truth the solely live performance anybody has been capable of attend in current reminiscence, and which may be the case for some time to come back.

Even in the event you’re a lapsed Fortnite participant, this sort of factor is completely value exhibiting up for, because it actually does really feel such as you’re residing via a chunk of web/gaming historical past. There are 4 extra exhibits deliberate for Astronomical, together with an encore within the US. Right here’s the remaining schedule.

4/24 – EU & ME – 10AM EDT

4/25 – Asia & Oceania – 12AM EDT

4/25 – EU & ME – 11AM EDT

4/25 – The Americas – 6PM EDT

Belief me, it doesn’t matter what you consider Fortnite, Travis Scott or the rest, it is a must-see manufacturing that YouTube clips merely can’t do justice. And that is the long run, in additional methods than one.