Around April of 2024, I saw "Toph" trending on social media.
Being my favorite character from Avatar: The Last Airbender, I wanted to see what the commotion was about.
She had been added as a playable character to Fortnite, along with Aang, Katara, Zuko, and Korra.
This was mostly relayed to me through funny videos and great art pieces of Toph with a sniper rifle.
I hadn't previously imagined what that would be like, but I've seen it now and it's incredible.
A number of Twitter dot com posts about Toph and Fortnite from around the time (not embedded):
Art by @_D_A_S_H_I_
Art by @robothegod
Art by @Joughbro
Art by @rustyreddroses
A clip uploaded by @AmyJamiC
A clip uploaded by @solarkarii
Seeing how well implemented the Avatar characters were got me thinking about Fortnite.
I originally tried the game in the spring of 2018 when it was first exploding in popularity.
After a number of matches, likely between five and ten, I wasn't left with much of a lasting impression.
One thing I did remember from that time was a solo game I managed to take third place in despite the fact that I never fired a shot.
What took the experience down for me was probably the building mechanics.
Many players reached a point where they could build intricate structures at a rapid pace.
It wasn't something I was particularly keen on wrapping my head around.
Deciding the game was more trouble than it was worth and that it probably wasn't for me in the first place,
I moved the game files over to an external drive so I could use those instead of a full redownload at some point in the near future.
I never ended up touching them again.
As time passed, I would occasionally see or hear about how the game was evolving.
A marketing stunt about a "Fortnite 2" update, new playable characters being added,
a battle royale mode without building being introduced, and other game modes being added.
I think the mode that stuck out the most to me was the "Lego Fortnite" mode.
I saw its introduction as part of the Game Awards show in 2023.
I knew nothing about how it actually played, but remembering the good experiences I had with Lego games in the past,
I thought up some remark to the effect of "they're finally making Fortnite a good game".
For all the time that had passed, I never tried picking it up again and my low opinion of it remained in place.
With the addition of the Avatar characters getting me to think about the game again,
I realized it wasn't fair for my opinion of the game to still be oriented around a limited experience of what it was like six years ago.
Throughout that time, much has changed and the game continues to put up a high active player count.
Even though I didn't expect my opinion to change much, I decided that this would be a good time to give Fortnite another chance.
If nothing else, I would at least be able to waste money on playable Toph now so that I would have it for any future revisits.
With no real plan of what to do and no research being performed before jumping in, I installed the game again after installing the Epic Games Launcher.
I apparently never added that to my new PC.
I also did a complete redownload of the game, despite still having the files from 2018.
Odds were good that most of those files would need to be redownloaded anyway due to updates.
EDIT: The amount of time between when the first parts of this were written and the last parts is about three months. Parts may repeat ideas that were already expressed or conflict with each other as my understanding and opinions of the game changed over time. Additionally, game updates have changed the experience in ways that may cause misalignments between what I wrote about the then-current versions and newer versions.