Yesterday we saw the release of Fortnite’s seasonal bonus skin, a new legendary outfit called A.I.M. that allows players to be a robot for what I believe is the first time (were any of those superhero skins robots? I’m still not sure).
The skin arrived on the map yesterday via parachute, which got stuck on top of Flush Factory, and in the past, these special skins have been somewhat significant to the “plot” of Fortnite moving forward. The Visitor, for instance, both launched the rocket and summoned the Cube that have dominated the Fortnite landscape for several seasons now.
While I don’t know what A.I.M.’s role is going to be in Fortnite specifically, the skin itself does contain one clue about where we’re heading in season 5.
Many fans have pointed out something strange about the skin. While the metal is one color on most of the skin, it appears that A.I.M.’s hands and feet are a frozen blue. If you own the skin it’s easier to see than in screenshots, but it definitely seems like a purposeful design decision, and a possibly clue about the different kind of storm that’s about to hit Fortnite in season 7.
Season 6 will end in about a month, and when December arrives, it seems more than a little likely that we will be getting a snowbound rework of the Fortnite map for a chilly season 7 winter theme. While it seems unlikely that the entire map, desert and all, will be covered in snow for the event, I would not be surprised to see anywhere from a third to half the map buried in snow in season 7, and I think A.I.M. is clueing us into the fact that this is going to happen with his frozen appendages.
Fortnite has recently introduced a “chiller” trap that freezes players legs and allows them to slide. But in season 7, I’d be surprised if we didn’t see some sort of stun-based snowball consumable you can throw, and I think it would be cool if they turned the regular storm into a painful blizzard.
I’m not sure how this snow map will arrive. It might just be the normal changing of seasons. After all, nothing in the “storyline” of Fortnite with the rocket launch and rifts caused the desert to show up, it was just there. And it may just…start to snow without this being some sort of Cube-triggered ice age or something. But who knows.
I do not know what our new mysterious robot friend has to do with any of this, and why his arms and legs are frozen in particular, but that seems like too purposeful a design decision to ignore.
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