Air carrier flight crew reported during cruise they encountered rain followed by a loud bang which they believed to be a large piece of hail that struck and shattered the Captain's side windshield.

Narrative

On Day 0 I was the first officer operating flight ABCD ZZZ-ZZZ1. We departed ZZZ on time as planned. After take off coming through about 12;000 feet we were given direct ZZZZZ intersection; as we headed there we asked for right derivation round some cells we had seen as we were VMC. upon leveling out at 16;000 feet; our final altitude we were direct ZZZ1. We were about parallel to ZZZ2 and ZZZ Center called us noticing us that it looked like moderate precipitation had just popped up at our 12-1 o'clock in 20 or so miles and asked if we were showing anything. The Captain and I both had our radars on and we were not showing such precipitation. About 10 seconds after this it began raining really bad followed by a loud bang. Which we believed to be a large piece of hail that struck the windshield; shattering the Captains side of the windshield. Following this or first action was to identify the problem; w noticed only the outer pain of the windshield has shattered and we were still holding pressurization. The Captain then transferred the controls to me as his vision was obscured with the crack and I flew the reminder of the flight. We requested priority handling and requested lower in cause it had worsened by chance and we started losing pressurization. We were almost over ZZZ3 at this point and we made the decision to continue to ZZZ1 instead of diverting else where as it was within similar distances. We landed in ZZZ1 safely and after arriving at the gate we left the flight deck door closed while deplaning to avoid any passengers seeing what had happened. In the eyes of the passengers it was just a normal flight and we all arrived safely.