The annual Game Awards, hosted by Geoff Keighley, have become well-known for featuring announcements from major players in the video game industry between handing out accolades. This year has been no exception, with build-up promising between 12 and 15 unannounced world premieres at The Game Awards 2020, but many games like Fortnite promised to appear ahead of tonight's show.
A teaser for Fortnite's Game Awards 2020 announcement came by way of Keighley on Twitter last week, as he posted a short clip to the social media site talking about how he received a "mysterious backpack" belonging to in-game character Agent Jones. As it turns out, that was building up to the reveal that Halo's Master Chief is available as a skin in Fortnite as of this writing.
A short cinematic revealed during The Game Awards 2020 showed Master Chief emerging from a convenience store fridge. After that, Epic Games Creative Director Donald Mustard presented another video featuring streamer Tyler "Ninja" Blevin and characters from Rooster Teeth's Red vs. Blue series announcing a recreated version of the Blood Gulch map from Halo will be a Fortnite Creative map. That will become available for games of Capture the Flag starting at 10:00 a.m. ET tomorrow, according to Mustard.
Fortnite introduced Season 2, Chapter 5: Zero Point on December 2, following up a season based on Marvel Comics characters by centering the battle royale's content around the theme of hunters. Din Djarin (Mando) and Grogu (Baby Yoda) from Disney+ series The Mandalorian were the headlining additions to kick off the season, joining a group of bounty hunters from across dimensions called The Seven.
Following the introduction of Mando as an unlockable skin in the game's latest Battle Pass, Fortnite introduced Kratos from Santa Monica Studio's God of War. Plenty of other characters fitting the theme have been suggested by fans, such as Samus from Nintendo's Metroid series. However, Master Chief and the Blood Gulch limited-time map were leaked ahead of today's announcement.
Even more crossover characters have been hinted at since Season 5 began. Notable teasers in the game's marketing and found around the Stealthy Stronghold location indicate 1987's Predator may come to Fortnite soon. Fans of Microsoft's classic first-person shooter franchise should be happy to see Halo appear in the popular battle royale, but Keighley and Mustard also followed that announcement up by revealing characters from The Walking Dead will make their way to Fortnite as well.
Fortnite is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.