You’ve heard of anime in Fortnite, but now get ready for anime Fortnite. That’s right, the anime artstyle takeover continues with another Chinese company taking a popular game format and trying to turn it into an anime-themed version. We’ve had a ton of announcements lately like Neverness To Everness and Project: Mugen, which both seem to take a lot of elements and inspiration from Rockstar’s GTA series. The former even showed off gameplay of owning and customizing a car and an apartment. Given the success of Mihoyo’s gacha games, developers all across China appear to be hoping to recapture that idea of “what if we turned The Legend of Zelda series into pure anime?” and applying that logic to a variety of genres. Today it’s the battle royale format on the menu.

Make no mistake, Fate Trigger: The Novita is not associated with the Fate series (if that wasn’t obvious from the trailer). Judging from the announcement, it appears to be a combination of many Fortnite and Apex Legends elements. You’ll be able to unlock heroes to join the fray and form a team with, whereas the camera placement and overall combat looks like someone pulled them straight from Fortnite’s code. The company has stated they don’t plan on charging for heroes and rather plan to earn money from cosmetic purchases. This is good news for everyone involved as Concord should have done an excellent job of teaching the entire industry that nobody wants to pay money for a competitive online shooter in 2024. As someone who has played Fortnite semi-regularly for a while now… I’m not too sure if this will find much of an audience. Fortnite already does anime collabs pretty frequently and I’m not sure there’s too much on display here that will entice players to switch over from whatever battle royale they currently indulge in (if any). Another big red flag for me is how many female characters were shown off in the trailer. Listen I think we all appreciate a classy goon, however, when it’s this many baddies appearing and not a single guy, I start worrying that the designers cared more about drawing in lonely weebs with a harem cast rather than crafting a quality game. 

Shooters are dropping tough competition right now with Marvel Rivals slated for later this year. Plsu Valve’s new Deadlock game seems to be finding an audience. Combine these heavy hitters with the already established giants of today, and I worry about Fate Trigger: The Novita popping off that much. Or rather, staying around much longer than two weeks after its initial surge of people checking it out. Perhaps the upcoming closed alpha test on September 25 will generate some buzz. Have you heard about this game? Are you interested in trying it out? Is the market too saturated for shooters, or will it be able to carve out a niche? Team up with the boys, choose your hero, and claim the victory royale in the comments below!