'Paladins' Is Getting Its Own Battle Royale Mode, 'Battlegrounds'

Hi-Rez Studios' Paladins is a free-to-play hero-based shooter that launched in 2016. It's been chugging along and holding its own among other games of its ilk like Overwatch, but it's been paddling in some relatively calm waters since its debut. That could all change with Hi-Rez's announcement today during its Hi-Rez Expo 2018.Paladinsis getting its own battle royale mode, Paladins: Battlegrounds, as a free add-on that's scheduled to arrive later this year.

This mode will be the "first-ever hero shooter battle royale," according to Hi-Rez, combining elements of its core game with the last-man-standing elements of games like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds andFortnite: Battle Royale. The game mode will throw 100 players into an enormous map, supposedly "over 300 times the square footage of a typical PaladinsSiege map," Hi-Rez notes, and leave them all to duke it out until one player remains.

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Like PUBG, the play area will continually be reduced to force combatants together, with the option to traverse the battlefield on various mounts and stock up with stores of loot around the area. Each game is slated to last about 20 minutes, with all players taking up the mantle of their favorite Paladins character for the duration of the match.  

Paladins' new battle royale mode is just par for the course in a growing line of games that see fit to add this mode to their portfolios. Epic's Fortnite was the most recent to implement the game type, as well as Grand Theft Auto and even Warface. It's something that's likely on the laundry list of modes and augments other popular titles are looking to add, given the massive, incredible success of PUBG.

You can likely look for this to remain a trend for the near future, especially given how popular they end up being with fans. Whether this particular one is any good, however, is something that remains to be seen. We’ll have to wait until later this year to give it a spin. In the meantime, you can try out vanilla Paladins by downloading it here.