Tyler “Ninja” Blevins will be streaming a duos game of Fortnite with a rather bored looking Mark Hamill this week, in what is surely the strangest of timelines for our reality. The games are part of the cross promotion between the film Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, and the related content released in Fortnite, including skins of the characters from the series, lightsabers, gliders, and a TIE Fighter crash site.
While collaborative promotions are common today, this one may be the least fitting for the target audience. When Star Wars Battlefront 2 launched in November of 2017, developer EA was in the midst of a massive controversy both for its implementation of greedy loot box mechanics, and for attempting to pass off the behavior as wanting players to strive for a feeling of pride and accomplishment, which in fact required only opening one’s wallet and spending hundreds of dollars on in-game purchases.
Mark Hamill was asked about this controversy by fans, and to his credit, the actor did reply over Twitter, stating that he does not play any video games and was thus completely unaware of any controversy.
As such, while the idea of Hamill playing Fortnite with Ninja was probably praised on paper, there seems little point in the exercise. Hamill might brush up on his Battle Royale skills before jumping into the game, but we are most probably going to be witnessing a stream with one professional gamer and one confused actor waiting for the whole thing to end. The stream will be taking place on December 19, one day before the release of the film, though no official time or location has been posted, but Ninja’s Mixer channel is a safe bet.
Speaking of Star Wars Battlefront II, much has changed since the game first launched over two years ago, and it too is seeing a big bump in new content. New players can also pick up the Celebration Edition which will feature all the content released to date, as well as the new content for Rise of the Skywalker.
For now, we can only wait and see how Hamill does when facing off against other players, though given that he will be playing next to Ninja, there is a good chance that the pair will survive, at least for a short while.
Source: gamesradar.com