100 Thieves announced a new Fortnite game mode called “Bank Heist” to the community creators list on July 11th at 11am PDT. Bank Heist is available by searching the community page or using the island code that will be released tomorrow. We had 30 minutes of game time, so here’s what to expect in Bank Heist.
Bank Heist is a 3v3 team-based game. If he wants to face off against his friends, he can queue up in groups of six, and teammates will be randomly selected when you enter the game mode. One of his teams of three is defenders and he has another team of attackers.
There are four set classes to choose from: Muscle, Tank, Grenadier, and Sniper. Each has a specific gun associated with their class, with tanks equipped with shotguns, grenadiers with throwable explosives, and snipers with sniper rifles. You can choose another class, called a wildcard, that randomizes your loadout each time you choose it.
Each match is divided into three stages: bank robbery, payload escort, and extraction.
In the first stage, the attacker’s goal is to break into the bank and successfully drill into the vault. The defender must defend the vault and hold off the attacker until the timer runs out. If the attacker succeeds, Stage 2 will begin.
Once the attacker is past the vault, they should escort the payload to the designated endpoint. This stage is much like the concept of escorting payloads in Overwatch, requiring you to be near the payload in order for it to move forward. Defenders must stop attackers from getting their payloads to their destination and reduce the time.
Once the attacker has the payload reach the drop point, a new building will open and they will flee there, grab the cash bag, and run to the getaway helicopter to drop the money. You can take out as many cash bags as you want or as long as you want within the set time limit. The defender can destroy the helicopter before the attacker takes off with it, and the helicopter will explode and respawn until time runs out.
This is the basic gameplay loop of Bank Heist, with each team swapping sides to determine the winner. This is his best-of-three game mode, and if one team manages to win his two games in a row, the game ends immediately without a third game being played.
It’s a fun team-based game, but it felt very attacking. The timer is a bit too long and it seems like you’re giving too many tries before the attacker succeeds, so it feels like you can’t really lose if you’re on the offensive side. Fortnite MMR is set to carry over to Bank Heist matchmaking, so hopefully it will help keep team player balance from getting too out of hand.
Of course, balancing doesn’t really work properly if you queue with friends, but at least you get to know everyone you’re playing with. Weapon balance felt decent, especially when wildcards were an option. However, only one girl on your team can be in a particular class, so choose carefully.
Bank Heist is just one of many game modes available in Fortnite’s Community Hub made with the Unreal Editor for Fortnite. 100 Thieves plans to release more updates after the Bank Heist launch and create more Fortnite game islands in the future.
Stella is a Video Producer, Host and Editor at IGN. Her gameplay focus is competitive her FPS games and so far she has reviewed Apex Legends, Hyper Scape, Halo Infinite Multiplayer and Battlefield 2042. She regularly hosts and shoutcasts Apex Legends and Halo Infinite competitive tournaments when she’s not streaming on her Twitch channel after work. out. You can follow her on Twitter @ParallaxStella.
