Fortnite fans think Epic Games is teasing Darth Vader

This week’s big Unreal Engine event brought word of a new Tomb Raider game set to made using Unreal Engine 5, and saw Epic Games’ powerful game toolkit made freely available to all.

There wasn’t a lot of news for Fortnite players – at least, not on the surface.

But eagle-eyed Fishstick fans did subsequently spot something: a brief glimpse at a list of Fortnite file names left open on a strategically-placed Epic Games computer. Zoom in and you can make out references to “Vader” and “Family Guy”.

“Vader” is interesting due to its “C3S3” prefix – suggesting the character could become available during Fortnite’s next season (Chapter 3 Season 3), and potentially as part of its battle pass. This could also fit with Vader’s appearance in the forthcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi Disney+ series, which will arrive around the same time.

“Family Guy” is notable due to the fact fans found files relating to the animated series within Fortnite around a year ago – though nothing became of them at the time. These files showed an edited version of the series’ first famous Peter Griffin vs Giant Chicken fight, with blood spatters removed to fit Fortnite’s more family-friendly audience. Said images were spread by several prominent Fortnite leakers – though fans now believe they may have been a deliberate plant by Epic Games to fool those who repeatedly datamine its game.

Fan opinion is split on whether these file names are a deliberate tease of future content – or a joke by Epic Games, which likely knows people over-analyse such videos for clues. It seems unlikely, however, these filenames happened to be included in the Unreal Engine presentation by accident.

We’ve asked Epic for more.

In other Fortnite news, Epic Games’ battle royale this week confirmed it had raised an astonishing $144m for Ukraine humanitarian relief.

Epic has since also announced a major new partnership with Lego.