Donald Mustard, the chief creative officer at Epic and main architect of the Fortnite Battle Royale storyline, is retiring. It's a fascinating time for a change like this for Fortnite--the storyline in Battle Royale has been in shambles for more than a year, and it's only gotten worse with every new season in Chapter 4.

I'm not saying that's Mustard's fault. It seems unlikely that the storyline we've seen play out this year. Instead, as with most video games, the story has taken a backseat to many other concerns. When Epic changes its plans for something, the writers have to roll with it--even if it isn't possible to do so while keeping it coherent. While Fortnite's Marvel-esque story wasn't overly coherent in a good year, in the past you could at least track the big picture from season to season. Not anymore.

Epic is so tight-lipped about, well, everything, that we don't have a lot of hard info about the various ways that Epic has pivoted off its plans--technically, we don't really have any firm proof that it pivoted at all.