Spartans, grab your battle rifles and plasma swords! Halo 5 (now carrying the subtitle Guardians) has been officially announced by 343 Industries and Microsoft. The new Xbox One exclusive will apparently be 343’s most ambitious title to date, showing what looks like a second protagonist in the cover art and offering: “… a “Halo” game that runs at 60 frames per second, on dedicated servers, with the scope, features and scale we’ve been dreaming of for more than a decade…”
The game will launch in the fall of 2015, and will apparently have a far grander scope in both content available at the technology powering the game. They also will be taking fan feedback from Halo 4 and are putting more effort than ever before in understanding and embracing a community of gamers who love what lies at the heart of this game.
In With the New
The game will be built on a new engine, according to Franchise development director Frank O’Connor in a post on Halo Waypoint. What’s more curious is O’Connor’s last paragraph:
“Previous Halo titles, Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 for example, strove to push the entire ecosystem forward – dual stick FPS with big open spaces in the case of Combat Evolved, and broadband matchmaking in Halo 2 – are just a couple of examples of the series innovating or amplifying ideas. So in building Halo 5: Guardians, we want to push the ecosystem as well as the universe. And we’ll have some surprises in store for new and loyal players of the series.”
– Frank O’Connor
O’Connor clearly is implying there are new gameplay ideas on the horizon for Halo 5, although we’ll unfortunately have to wait until E3 to get a hint at what they are. Considering the grander scale of the game’s box art (pictured above), logo (pictured below), and first official piece (pictured further below) of concept art, we might see some even more vastly non-linear levels and perhaps finally some neutral or native NPCs that can be either hostile or friendly?
Not only is Halo 5 covered in the announcement, but the Halo TV series is once again referenced, name dropping only Steven Spielberg in addition to “some of the finest minds in the business.” The show will apparently be planned to start rolling out near the same time in Fall 2015.
The only rumored Microsoft reveal for this year’s E3 we haven’t already heard is whether or not to expect Halo 2: Anniversary for either Xbox 360 or Xbox One. All that is mentioned is that the “journey” spoken of during the last E3 definitely begins in 2014 with a giant leap, rather than one small step.
Are you excited for Halo 5? Do you think Microsoft should be focusing on new games like Titanfall? What do you think about playing with a second protagonist again like in Halo 2? Let us know in the comments below.
