Fortnite Season 5 Adds Halo’s Master Chief

Update: Halo’s Master Chief made his appearance at The Game Awards. Original story below:

The Game Awards pretty much wouldn’t be complete without an appearance from Fortnite at this point, and this year’s show didn’t disappoint in that regard with Epic Games’ battle royale game returning to share more news. The current season of Fortnite is based around bounty hunters and people who fit loosely into that profession like Kratos from the God of War games, and previous teasers already hinted that we’d get another reveal of that caliber on Thursday. During The Game Awards, Epic Games delivered on those teases by adding Master Chief from the Halo franchise will be coming to the game.

Though the big Halo announcement is expected to make an appearance at The Game Awards, it hasn’t yet happened at the time of publication. Instead, it appears that Master Chief has arrived in the Fortnite Item Shop. It’ll likely to get its time during The Game Awards to show off what the character’s inclusion looks like, but players are already sharing screenshots from the Item Shop as well as regional trailers showing off the reveal.

The Game Awards producer and host Geoff Keighley and Epic Games’ Worldwide Creative Director previously teased that there’d be a new bounty hunter added to the mix on Thursday. Keighley hinted that there’d be news on that “and more” which naturally spurred on theories and speculations about what else Fortnite might have planned in the game itself or otherwise.

Prior to the reveal, Fortnite players centered their efforts largely around guessing who would be added to the game next. Master Chief from Xbox’s acclaimed Halo series was a likely contender for inclusion in Fortnite given how one of PlayStation’s poster characters was added and each could be loosely interpreted as bounty hunters, or at least hunters, of some kind. Some “leaks” have also hinted at Master Chief’s arrival and an event associated with the release, but like any leaks, those have been unconfirmed. The Predator coming to Fortnite was another theory some in the community held, though people were unsure of how that idea would be handled be it through a skin for the hunter, having the Predator added as a “boss” fight, or a combination of the two.

Fortnite’s current season about all manners of hunters just recently got underway, so expect to see many more characters added throughout the season whether they’re Fortnite originals or guests.