Star Wars took over Fortnite to debut Rise of Skywalker footage
A galaxy far, far away arrived to Fortnite on Saturday. The newest clip for Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker was debuted in-game for players to see.
The event took place at the in-game movie theater location, Risky Reels, and let players watch a brief introduction by Geoff Keighley once the premiere started at around 2:10 p.m. ET — after a 10 minute delay to allow more players to sign in.
The event started with the Millennium Falcon flying onto the map along with several First Order Star Destroyers. After the ships appeared a massive space battled ensues with stray TIE Fighter blasts slamming into some of the map’s most recognizable locations. The Falcon eventually defeats the First Order ships and lands next to players.
A projection of Geoff Keighley appeared and introduced the clip to players. After a brief introduction from an excited Storm Trooper, J.J. Abrams himself — or a Fortnite in-game model of him — came out onto a stage to introduce the clip. Fans in-game were given the chance to vote on what they thought the clip would be and maybe even which clip was chosen.
The clip was only about a minute long and showed off Rey, Finn, and Poe sneaking onto a First Order Star Destroyer. As they make their way further onto the ship two stormtroopers stop them. Rey sends them walking away with a Jedi mind trick .
After the clip premiered players were allowed to choose their favorite color of lightsaber, before the iconic Jedi weapon was released into the game thanks to a chest brought in by the Millennium Falcon. The lightsabers appear to now be part of the standard Fortnite weapons along with Star Wars blaster rifles.
As part of the event, Epic treated players to brand new Star Wars-themed gliders that were modeled off of the TIE whisper First Order ships from the movie. Every player that dropped into the premier event mode received the glider as soon as they hopped out of the battle bus.
Not everyone that wanted to take part in the clip’s debut was able to. Epic ran into some serious server issues just before the event started, around 1 p.m. ET, that rendered many players unable to log into their Epic account. Despite these issues the premiere was still an undoubtedly massive event with millions of people watching on Twitch and other streaming platforms as well as the countless players that were actually able to log into the game.
Epic’s partnership with Disney and Lucasfilm doesn’t end at this Star Wars clip either. There are also Star Wars skins in the shop including Rey, Finn and a Sith Stormtrooper. This is the second major partnership Epic has had with a Disney movie franchise this year, after the Avengers: Endgame event in Fortnite around that movie’s release.
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