Whether playing as Chief or Locke, you're accompanied by a fireteam of 3 A.I. which you can command/issue orders to in the campaign
Highlighting an enemy and hitting up on the D-Pad orders your team to assault an enemy
Other commands include picking up certain weapons, using turrets, driving warthog, etc
AI teammates can revive you as well
Confirmed: Linda, Kelly, and Fred join the Chief
Game starts out before Chief is on the run
Audio has been heavily reworked from the ground up for Xbox One (bullet sounds, debris, etc)
8 months after Halo 4 ends, cataclysmic events are tearing apart star systems, these are tied to the Guardians (Forerunner entities shown in the first teaser trailer)
Game Informer played the second mission, taking command of Chief and Blue Team to take back an ONI research vessel abandoned for 2 years
Team banter replaces interactions with Cortana to flesh out the characters
There are multiple routes to take in levels
The zealous religions Covenant are slowly abandoning Jul M'dama's leadership in Halo 4
Spoilers: Cortana's silhouette is seen by the Chief after he's separated from Blue Team, she says: "John, the domain is open. Meridian is next. You only have 3 days, John. The Reclamation is about to begin."
XBL Gold is not required for online co-op.
Halo 5 will launch with over 20 multiplayer maps
15 DLC maps by June 2016
All maps will be free
Teases a "completely new, epic multiplayer experience" they'll reveal at E3. Incorporates "all aspects of the Halo sandbox for the first time ever"
This MP experience is described as a "dream of ours and all our fans to build something like this"
We went to 343 Industries to get the first hands-on with Master Chief's campaign. As you can see from the cover imagery, the Chief is now accompanied by the legendary Blue Team in both single-player and four-player co-op. Linda, Fred, and Kelly were abducted when they were six years old alongside John to be turned into Spartan-II super soldiers. This tight-knit squad grew up together and battled through many adventures in the expanded fiction, but this will mark their first significant role in a core Halo game. With the loss of Cortana in Halo 4, Blue Team steps up to interact with Chief, appear in cutscenes, and accept commands from him in single-player. In co-op play, everyone takes on a specific member, each with a different loadout unique to their specialty.
We played an early mission set before Master Chief and Blue Team are declared AWOL by the very military that made them. The flipside of the campaign follows Spartan Jameson Locke, seen in the Halo: Nightfall TV series, as he tracks down Halo's signature hero to bring him in or take him down. Locke recruits a team of his own, Fireteam Osiris, to do the job. This mix of familiar and new faces rounds out the team of high-tech Spartan-IVs, who all come from elite military backgrounds. See if you can spot a returning fan favorite in our coverage trailer below.
Our lengthy hands-on sessions also included plenty of time in the revamped competitive Arena multiplayer. In the cover story, we break down specific changes to the Empire map from last winter's beta and we debut a never-before-seen map called Fathom. This undersea base looks gorgeous and is loaded with all kinds of hidden tricks for experienced players to dig in and discover. 343 also teases a new multiplayer mode never seen in a Halo game before.
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/arch ... 23520.aspxTrailersGameplayChanges from the Beta -
[spoiler]The team has spent the past few weeks poring over player feedback from the aforementioned sources. From this we have developed an extensive list of improvements for the game. What follows is a short summary of items that we are addressing for launch. Some of these improvements were already in development and didn’t make it in time for the beta. The majority of changes address issues that surfaced during the beta and relate to feedback coming directly from the community. It’s important to point out that there will be a massive list of additional improvements and bug fixes that are not captured here, as we hosted this beta almost a year from release.
In the ViDoc that introduced the new Spartan Abilities before the beta went live, I touched on the fact that a portion of the Halo community strongly prefers to play without sprint. The results from the HCFP surveys showed that nearly 11% of HCFP participants felt that Halo should not have sprint. It is important that we continue to evolve Halo multiplayer while ensuring that legacy Halo players feel right at home. As a result, I’m happy to say that we will provide toggles in custom games so that sprint and the other Spartan Abilities can be turned off. By putting these tools in the hands of players we will give them the ability to play the game their way, enabling them to create a more traditional style of Halo if they prefer.
Some of the other improvements that we are making to Spartan Abilities and general mobility coming out of the beta:
•Increase base speed (faster base movement)
•Increase strafe acceleration (faster, more responsive strafing)
•Reduce top sprint speed (narrow the delta between base movement and sprint)
•Modify Ground Pound controls to prevent conflicts w/ crouch jumping
•General tuning & bug fixes for all Spartan Abilities (Thrusters, Clamber, Ground Pound, etc.)
Other improvements we’ll be making to presentation based on fan feedback:
•Post-death replay: this will become an opt-in feature. After death, players will see a traditional follow-cam and have the option to view a replay of their death from the killer’s perspective (as long as the feature is enabled within the playlist)
•Medals: decrease frequency and number of medals displayed in the medal feed
•Spartan chatter: players will have the option to turn this on or off in the settings menu
•Adding highlights to placed/dropped weapons to make them easier to see
•General tuning for announcer and Spartan chatter to reduce the frequency of events and focus on the information that matters most to players
Coming out of beta we have a number of fixes and improvements already in flight for matchmaking but at a high level our focus is on the following:
•Much faster matches
•Better skill matching
•Better feedback to players in the lobby and matchmaking experiences
•Allow players to set desired datacenter for matchmaking (may impact matchmaking speed and skill balance)
•Improved party vs party matchmaking
•Hide CSR ranks until in match to de-incentivize quitting
•Punish quitters with CSR penalties and matchmaking bans
Some of the other improvements that we’ll be making to weapons in the game follow:
•Sniper Rifle: improve scope experience to making it less “clunky” and faster to scope
•DMR: adjust position of the scope to improve visibility
•Bring back the SPNKr Rocket Launcher as a legendary version of the weapon
•Reduce bonuses for automatic weapons in Smart-Link & w/ headshots
•Remove grenade detonation in mid-air based on weapon fire
•Ability to turn on/off vibration feedback for weapons
•General tuning and bug fixing for all weapons
In Conclusion...
With the Halo 5: Guardians Multiplayer Beta being held so early in development, there is a laundry list of other bug fixes and improvements that we are tracking as a team. Far too many to document here. Everything from weapon placements on maps, to lighting improvements, to rule tweaks in game modes and modifications to the motion tracker to encourage more movement at higher levels of play. Our team constantly looks for ways to improve the game and we’ll continue to do so until launch later this year and beyond.
Looking back, this beta has been an amazing gift for us. The feedback we have received from all of you has been invaluable in helping us to improve our game. On behalf of the entire Halo 5: Guardians team, we thank you for your support. We absolutely couldn’t do this without you. I hope you enjoyed your first glimpse into the future of Halo multiplayer and look forward to sharing more with you in the months ahead.
A lot more here -
https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/comm ... -guardians