Another season of Fortnite Festival has brought us a new Festival Pass and a new Icon skin with Billie Eilish, but the biggest bit of news at the start of Season 3 may be that Fortnite Festival now supports guitar controllers.
With Eilish as this season’s headliner, the Festival pass has undergone some significant changes to structure it more like the event passes, like the current Avatar Elements pass. That means in this season (and presumably those in the future), buying the premium Festival Pass for 1800 V-Bucks will instantly unlock a skin for the related artist–in this case the Green Roots Billie skin–and you can earn an additional, exclusive style at the end of the pass.
That bonus style is another change to the way the Festival Pass works. Epic has placed a disclaimer on these passes, reserving the right to sell the cosmetics from the pass in the item shop in the future, but here we have an exception: the Ultraviolet style of the Green Roots Billie skin will only ever be obtainable from the Season 3 Festival Pass.
You can progress through the Season 3 Festival Pass by completing Festival quests as you play. You can grab a free track of rewards, which includes four jam tracks and culminates in the quite gnarly Lavatronik Bass. For those who upgrade to the premium track, you’ll unlock the new Billie Eilish-themed keytar and mic stand, four new jam tracks, and a variety of other cosmetics.
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The new jam tracks on the premium track of the Festival pass are:
- Oxytocin by Billie Eilish
- Friday I’m In Love by The Cure (This is the one referenced in the title, by the way)
- Youngblood by 5 Seconds of Summer
- Maps by Maroon 5
Unlike the previous Festival headliners, Eilish only has one skin right now, the one that’s available with the Festival pass, though Epic promises that Eilish will get a new Item Shop skin later in the season to coincide with her upcoming album release. For now, though, Eilish will have three new jam tracks available in the shop–“Happier Than Ever,” “Therefore I am” and “all the good girls go to hell”–as well as two emotes, dubbed “bad guy” and “you should see me in a crown.” And yes, the lack of capital letters is intentional–it’s a Gen Z thing, just go with it.
As mentioned above, the addition of support for guitar controllers is another huge story for the new season. As of the start of Season 3, Festival officially supports three guitar controllers: the Rock Band 4 Fender Stratocaster, the Rock Band 4 Fender Jaguar, and the brand-new PDP Riffmaster R controller.
Guitar controllers will have their own separate guitar and bass charts for each song, as well as their own leaderboards–if you’re stuck on a regular gamepad, you won’t be competing against guitar folks for high scores. Epic promises more news about instrument controllers in the relative near future–support for plastic drums may be on the horizon.