PUBG Has a Backstory, Now

PUBG is known for a lot of things: being a janky and unplayable mess for a really long time after launch. Being the game that really kicked off the Battle Royale craze in earnest. Being way more ambitious than it really had any right to be. Dubious lawsuits. But one thing it was never especially known for was the plot, considering there was literally none: it was just a bunch of weirdos in weirder costumes throwing themselves off a plane to kill one another in an increasingly shrinking blue circle.

But that might change with the start of season 4, because PUBG, apparently, has a story: and it’s about as silly as you might expect.



Granted, it wasn’t supposed to be silly. But the idea of a young boy becoming so obsessed with survival that he decides to, I don’t know… buy land? Create a giant shrinking blue electrical walls? Make a giant game show where 99 people have to be sacrificed in order to find that one survivor? Kinda like… some kind of paramilitary Jigsaw killer?

I dunno. It’s stupid, but it’s fun. And it’s definitely the last thing I expected from PUBG.

But it’s more than just a trailer: according to the 4.1 update, there will be some small yet big changes to the Erangel map: something to make it more narratively cohesive, as the stated goal is to give the island “a better sense of history”. That might mean we’ll get Dark-Souls levels of environmental world-building in a friggen’ Battle Royale game. That’s almost exciting.

Anyway. If you want to see these changes yourself, you’d better hop onto your PC and play on the open test server. It’ll be coming to the broader public – and the consoles – later this summer.

It might not bring PUBG back to the mainstream, but it’ll sure make the fans happy.