Yesterday, Fortnite started teasing something, as it often does, but quickly I figured out this was something far from their usual “this superhero is coming to the game” fare. They posted the following tweet:
That’s a line, and a symbol, from Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series, with Sanderson being one of the best living fantasy authors in existence, and Mistborn perhaps behind his most well known series. And it marks the first time that Fortnite’s Metaverse has expanded to include book characters that have not yet been adapted for TV or film.
How did this happen? Do Fortnite skin designers just have really good taste in fantasy novels?
Turns out this is a bit circumstantial. Donald Mustard, de facto head of Fortnite, is real life friends with Brandon Sanderson, and approached him about getting characters from his books into the game. That resulted in the Kelsier skin we see above, and could mean more in the future.
Sanderson took to reddit to explain all this, admitting that he knows there may not be a ton of crossover between Mistborn fans and Fortnite players, but he enjoyed working with Epic on this all the same, and process to make the Kelsier skin took five months.
Here’s Sanderson:
“So what's going on behind the scenes? Well, Donald Mustard (director of Fortnite) is a friend of mine. We worked on Infinity Blade together back in the day. So, he asked if I was interested in sticking Kelsier into the game—and I thought it was cool. So we've been working on that for a few months.
Like I said (and several of you confirmed in this thread) it's not something I expect my general fanbase to go crazy over—but it's nifty, and I hope it will be fun for those of you who enjoy both properties. It's also been a blast to work with the Fortnite team.
They'll release more, but don't expect a huge crossover event. It's just a little fun thing that I'm doing with my friend, who happens to have accidentally made one of the most popular games of all time.”
Later, Sanderson goes on to say that they also have the rights to do a Vin skin (another Mistborn character), but that may or may not happen, and it wouldn’t be for a while yet, as they haven’t started designing it.
So, as cool as this is, I’m not sure I would expect a huge host of book-only skins heading to Fortnite any time soon, as this does seem like a bit of a special circumstance given that Mustard and Sanderson know each other. All I’m saying is that Donald may want to check out this book series I’ve heard of called Herokiller…
I do wonder when other book characters may arrive, though ones that have already seen adaptation. Fortnite has done big deals with mega properties like Marvel, DC and Star Wars, but will they be able to negotiate Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or Game of Thrones skins someday? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series, and The Earthborn Trilogy, which is also on audiobook.
