As the launch of Halo 5: Guardians marches progressively closer and closer, we’re starting to get more of a feel for what to expect from the highly anticipated sequel, so here’s everything that we know so far and a little preview of the gameplay you’ll be getting when it’s released in late Autumn 2015. While developers 343 Studios has been pretty tight lipped about the game over the last year or so, they let the flood gates down at E3 2015 meaning we now know a lot more about what it will bring to the table and whether or not it will be a match for other big first person shooters like Destiny, Battlefield 4 and Titanfall.
Release date
H5:G will be one of the biggest Xbox ONE exclusives when it’s released on the 27th October 2015 in both the UK and North America. In addition to the standard version of the game, they will also be releasing a Limited Edition – which includes the Halo: The Fall Of Reach animated series, Spartan steelbook, Guardian model, Locke’s classified orders, detailed intelligence on the two core teams that feature in the campaign and a 14 day trial of Xbox Live Gold – and a Limited Collector’s Edition – includes everything from the Limited edition, along with a commemorative statue of Master Chief and Spartan Locke and 14 premium Warzone requisition packs. In the UK, both of these are exclusive to Game.
Campaign story
Although Halo games have a big affinity with online, multiplayer first person action, the campaign modes have become a big part of their success, with sophisticated plots featuring the Master Chief and the wider roster of characters from the series. This looks like it’s going to be just as true for Halo 5: Guardians as it has been for earlier games with a tense space quest at the heart of the intense firefight fun.
Following directly on from Halo 4, it sees Spartan Locke and Fireteam Osiris wading into battle as The Master Chief goes AWOL in the wake of an attack on colony worlds that punctures the tenuous peace that had developed. As he hunts for Chief, he’s also hoping to get to the bottom of a mysterious and unstoppable force that threatens the safety of everyone in the galaxy, but with his target on his own quest to find the Guardian in the final stronghold of the Covenant it’s not going to be easy.
Gameplay
This will be the first new 8th generation game from the series and while we’d expect a lot of the classic gameplay brilliance from the the past, there was always going to be a need to bring something new to the party with expectations so high. The good news is that it’s starting to look like there are a few new elements to look forward to as 343 Studios try to surpass their previous best and deliver a gaming experience worth of the name Halo.
If you take a look at the gameplay trailer below you’ll see that there are a lot of similarities to the first person shooter mission-based style of gaming that we got to enjoy in the previous game in the series on the Xbox 360. The big difference between the games is that there will be more emphasis on a team based approach to progression as the 4 player co-op facility in the campaign mode will see players take on different characters, compared to the all-Chief co-op in 4, returning to the multi-character approach from Halo 3‘s campaign.
The characters that you’ll be able to select from the beginning include Spartan Locke, along with the rest of the members of Fireteam Osiris,
including Holly Tanaka, who made her first appearance in Halo 2: Anniversary, new character named Olympia Vale, and Edward Buck from Halo 3: ODS.
It’s not just the campaign that’s getting a bit of a change up in Halo 5: Guardians as the online multiplayer will be getting a big new game mode called Warzone in an attempt to reinvent things a little. It’s a move that many games have tried and not necessarily achieved, but Warzone looks like it might actually be the real deal with its player versus everything mentality.
It’s a huge 24-player battle mode with both friendly and enemy AI constantly dropping in to the game to increase the mayhem, which we hope will be a bit tastier than the throwaway grunts in Titanfall. Everything is thrown into the mix with two teams battling it out to wind the game, while also facing attacks from AI Covenant, Forerunners and bosses.
Graphics
We’ve got mixed feelings about the graphics if we’re being honest. Some of the visuals in the one minute teaser for the new Warzone online multiplayer look amazing, especially the battles with the big bosses, but then if you just look at the campaign demo below it’s not exactly inspirational. You may also want to quickly compare it to the gameplay graphics from Halo 4 and you’ll probably be amazed to see that things haven’t exactly leaped light years into the future.
Our biggest issue is that things look developed as opposed to looking and feeling solid and real, which isn’t always that much of an issue when it comes to computer games with great gameplay, but when you look up to the sky as you’re rounding a high tech plaza you expect the ships to look impressive, but sadly they don’t entirely. Facial animation in the cut scenes seems to have taken a step backwards in fact when you compare it to the previous game and while some of the other elements, like the incredible Guardian design and rendering, compensate a little for this, it’s still a bit of an issue for us.
First impressions
While we’re not bowled over by the graphics, which don’t look all that advanced in comparison to the efforts of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, you can’t take anything away from the potential of Guardians in terms of gameplay excellence. Expect this to be a real time stealer when it’s released in October, much in the same way that Destiny has been since it touched down last year. The Warzone battles look like a brilliant new way of fighting it out online, with everything in the mix and a number of way to win the games, and the excellent multiplayer gameplay action of previous titles is back in abundance.
However, there’s still a big question for us about whether or not Halo 5 has turned out to be all that it can be, and from the demos that we’ve seen we’re not there yet. We were expecting to be completely wowed by the prospect of playing the latest iteration of the Halo franchise and that’s not the case. It just feels like there needed to be more to the game than what we’re seeing right now, and its not just the graphics either. It’s going to be a contentious question right the way up to the game’s release and while we’ll definitely reserve judgement until then we’re balancing up on the fence for the time being.
