PUBGCorpPUBG was never exactly known for its story, because you know… it never had one. Have you never wondered exactly why the bloodthirsty denizens of Erangel so desperately crave a chicken dinner, though?
Rival efforts such as Fortnite and Apex Legends have made a point to introduce narrative elements that give reasons and context for any changes to the games, as well as background on exactly why you’ve dropped onto an island to murder 99 other players.
Given the latter games are inarguably more successful than PUBG these days (sorry, but they are), it makes sense that PUBG Corporation’s battle royale would start to adopt certain elements from its rivals. As a result, we now have the first ever story trailer for PUBG, and it’s actually really quite dark. You can check it out above.
While starting to embrace narrative elements is a clear nod to Fortnite and Apex Legends, the way in which PUBG goes about it couldn’t be more different from those games, which adopt a much lighter and less serious tone.
The PUBG story trailer shows us a young child on Erangel who’s managed to survive some kind of horrible battle on the island. It then jumps into the future, where we see the boy has grown into a man who now spends his time organising murderous battle royale tournaments on the island he once called home.
The trailer starts off with a young child on Erangel, PUBG’s first map, who is the sole survivor of a horrible battle on the island. It then skips ahead pretty far in the future, where the boy is now a man, apparently with quite a bit of cash, who organizes the battle royale tournaments on Erangel. It ends with a shot of the man staring at a massive bank of monitors, taking in all of the murderous mayhem.
PUBGCorpThe trailer ends with the man sat in front of a massive array of computer monitors, drinking in the mayhem that he’s funding for his own amusement.
It’s an interesting new twist for a game that’s always been light on story, and is surely indicative of what we can expect from the upcoming original narrative experience set within the PUBG universe from Call of Duty and Dead Space alum Glen Schofield.
PUBGCorpI’m intrigued to see where PUBG goes from here, and if these unexpected new elements will be enough to help the game reclaim its battle royale crown.
If you have a story you want to tell, send it to UNILAD via [email protected]
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.