We can’t say we heard many people asking for the PUBG team to come up with a backstory for the battle royale title (most of them are asking for updates and fixes), but the PUBG team went ahead and created a backstory for the game anyway.
Actually, it turns out that PUBG (or at least the game’s Erangel map) has a pretty interesting backstory. According to a recently released trailer, there was once a boy who survived a great conflict in the area known as Erangel. That boy grew up to seemingly become a great success. Well, at least he was enough of a success to arrange a great battle royale tournament that takes place on the island he once called home. It seems that he credits the Erangel incident for turning him into a strong survivor, and he wants to see if others have the same quality in them.
There are a lot of questions left unanswered by this trailer, but that seems to be the point. We’re actually quite interested to learn more about this mysterious organizer, the world the battle royale takes place in, if there’s some greater reward for participation (and how people are selected for participation), and whether or not this is some kind of public event or just a piece of private amusement.
Interestingly, this trailer ties into PUBG‘s upcoming Season 4 content launch which will see the game’s Erangel map undergo some significant changes. There will be new areas to explore on this map (which seem to relate to the game’s backstory somehow) as well as some updated visuals that seem to make PUBG look noticeably better (at least in the areas that we’ve seen in the previews released thus far).
This update will also feature some balance changes, a new Survival Pass, and a host of other features/improvements/changes that you can find here.
This is all pretty interesting, but it remains to be seen whether or not PUBG can ascend to the top of the battle royale genre given that Fortnite remains about as popular as ever and Apex Legends is experiencing a comeback thanks to the addition of a ranked mode and other content released as part of its substantial Season 2 update.
Matthew Byrd is a staff writer for Den of Geek. He spends most of his days trying to pitch deep-dive analytical pieces about Killer Klowns From Outer Space to an increasingly perturbed series of editors. You can read more of his work here or find him on Twitter at @SilverTuna014.
