MetaHuman technology will be used to add a new, improved Geoff Keighley to Fortnite in time for The Game Awards

Epic Games has scanned the show's host and media personality Geoff Keighley and placed him in Fortnite to vote for the Island of the Year at this year's The Game Awards. You can see a lifelike Big G as you try out the nominees and minigames.

Epic Games' blog says: "The Game Awards in Fortnite have been updated with a new batch of Islands to check out and to vote for, a new Arena to test your combat skills, and an slick, new host, the one and only MetaHuman Geoff Keighley." This year's digital Keighley has been improved from the version of 2023. The hologram look of last year was created by greenscreen video capture. This year's uses MetaHuman for a more realistic portrayal.

MetaHuman technology allows anyone to create realistic human-like models in Unreal Engine 5 : "MetaHuman provides a complete framework which gives anyone the ability to create, animate and use highly realistic digital characters in any manner imaginable." It's not instantaneous.

Keighley: "I was amazed by Epic's announcement earlier this year of MetaHumans for Unreal Editor Fortnite (UEFN). I thought it would be amazing to see what could be done around The Game Awards." "I spent an entire day at 3Lateral, in Manchester, England to be scanned as MetaHuman. You sit in the scanner and make a variety of faces poses. They scan your entire body. The results speak for them. "I feel like I've got a digital twin!"

Keighley's model is impressive, but this is not the first video game to scan Keighley. Death Stranding featured many cameos with the likenesses and voices of gaming and film celebrities. Keighley was one of them, appearing as the Luden fan.

I don't know which model is better. However, to my untrained eyes, they both seem pretty similar. Keighley's Fortnite model will likely do more than hover over the ground and talk to a player. I guess we'll just have to wait until The Game Awards to see if it was worth all that time spent getting scanned.

If you do not want to watch The Game Awards 2024 on Fortnite, then you can watch them on YouTube, Facebook or TikTok live, as well as other social media sites, on December 12th in the US, and December 13th in the UK.