Fortnite developer Epic Games may have cheekily teased that more Star Wars characters could be arriving in the game’s next season, as evidenced by a screenshot taken from the recent State of Unreal live stream and a less-than-subtle hint from Epic Games’ chief creative officer Donald Mustard’s Twitter account.
As PCGamesN (opens in new tab) reports, Twitter user polaq was able to grab a screenshot from the Unreal Engine 5 livestream showing a list of Fortnite-related folders displayed on a developer’s monitor. The highlight of the screenshot is the ‘C3S3_VADER’ folder, which could hint that iconic Star Wars villain Darth Vader is on his way to the ever-popular battle royale.
The initial image grabbed by polaq is a touch blurry, but notable Fortnite Twitter account iFireMonkey presented a much clearer screenshot of the folders, which you can view below.
During the State of Unreal showcase there was a segment showing the Intro Cinematic for Ch3 – S1.On the second monitor you can see some folders such as:- Family Guy- Chapter 3 – Season 3 Jones- Chapter 3 – Season 3 – Vader- Doomand some other filesSpotted by @polaqwym pic.twitter.com/CmfQ2lUxs0April 5, 2022
When isolated, the screenshot doesn’t exactly confirm that Darth Vader – and potentially other Star Wars characters – are coming to Fortnite. However, Epic Games CCO Donald Mustard only added to the speculation, tweeting an image (opens in new tab) of a piece of artwork depicting pixelated versions of Chewbacca and C-3PO.
Darth Vader wasn’t the only character seemingly teased. Other folders in the image have names including ‘Doom’ and ‘FamilyGuy’ and what looks like ‘Sega.’
These folder names do line up with characters the Fortnite community has been requesting for a while, including Doom Eternal‘s Doom Slayer and Yakuza series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu. And we suppose Peter Griffin could join the fight, too, which wouldn’t be much of a stretch considering Rick and Morty’s Rick Sanchez is also playable in Fortnite.
Is Fortnite really getting more Star Wars characters?
While it’s important to take the discussed screenshots with a hefty pinch of salt, especially as nothing has been confirmed from Epic Games itself, the addition of more Star Wars characters to the game is hardly outside the realm of possibility.
Fortnite already features skins depicting Rey, Finn, the Mandalorian and other popular Star Wars icons. It’s also not the first time Fortnite has worked with Disney-owned properties in general, with Doctor Strange being added as a playable character in the most recent season, while past seasons have featured a swathe of Marvel heroes including Spider-Man, Black Widow, Thor and more.
When it comes to Fortnite, it really seems like no character is off-limits for the crossover-heavy battle royale. A plethora of popular series and characters have been represented in the game since its 2017 launch. Beyond Marvel and Star Wars, for example, we’ve seen characters from Street Fighter, Naruto, Resident Evil, God of War, Cobra Kai and so many more take up arms in Fortnite.
More Star Wars characters like Darth Vader seem like an inevitability, especially as crossovers are undeniably Fortnite’s bread and butter, and a huge draw to the free-to-play title’s Battle Pass system.