After over six minutes of overwhelming news on the new Halo, fans everywhere are dying to get their hands on Halo 5. Here is the list of all the new things that are going to be brought into Halo 5.
Warzone: The new gametype 343 mentioned but never gave any detail about was finally released today. An action packed gametype with Promethean AIs, Covenant AIs and players clashing together in a 24 player map said to be nearly 4x the size of any Forge World.
Campaign Co-Op: Although Halo always had a Co-Op Campaign System, 343 decided to take it to a new level in Halo 5. As we already know from a few weeks ago, 343 announced dedicated servers to all custom games so we should expect that the Co-Op Campaign Games should run a lot smoother now which has always been a major problem in all Halo Campaign Co-Ops. We are introduced to a new revival system. It is unclear as to whether or not this revival system will be implemented in PVP matches as well but what we do know is that it takes about 3 seconds to revive a player.
The Plasma Caster: A new weapon that was shown to us in the Halo 5 campaign gameplay section. This weapon seems to be a Covenant weapon and looks like a bow gun that shoots out some sort of plasma energy ball. This “Ball of Plasma” seems to stick to an enemy when shot out and explode after about 1 ½ seconds of being in contact with the opponent.
A new Promethean Aircraft: In the near end of the trailer, we saw some sort of Promethean looking aircraft take off and fly around a covenant enemy. We also heard a human voice saying “We are airborne”. Which makes us believe that it might be a new air vehicle for Halo 5.
Other than this, we also found out that Banshees and Mantises would be brought back in Halo 5 after the campaign trailer. We also found out the Warthogs, Ghosts, and Wraths would be brought back after the Warzone presentation.
With a new gametype, new weapon, and new vehicles being brought into Halo 5, many are probably wondering, “Is this helping or hurting the competitive Halo community”?
343 did say that they were going to make Halo 5 satisfy both the competitive and casual gamer, but we have not seen anything that satisfies a competitive gamer yet and with with 6 months left until the game’s release that may be concerning for competitive players. What we do know right now is that the majority of competitive players have been pushing for sprint to be permanently removed from Halo. 343 is keeping sprint but gives gamers the option to remove it from custom games in Halo 5. Although it is nice for gamers to have this option in customs, what will a competitive gamer do in matchmaking? A topic like this is complicated to deal with in Halo mainly because the community is split in opinion with sprint. 343 wants to satisfy both but eventually they’re going to have to take a side.
A community split between just one part of the game is not just a waste of time, but it’s also really unhealthy for the future of our game. The reality is that most FPS shooters have sprint or some sort of system that makes the player move faster in small periods of time. Sprint outside of Halo is something that has already been settled with from other games. It adds a unique dynamic to the game that speeds up the gameplay and in many situations makes the game more exciting. The problem with those of us in this community is that most of us have played Halo without sprint and are more comfortable without it. It’s just who we are as older Halo players. If you were to ask a Halo player who started playing Halo in Halo: Reach or Halo 4 where sprint was implemented, most of them wouldn’t mind sprint since they started playing the game with it already implemented.
The Halo community is in the process of trying to adapt to the new age of competitive shooters. 343’s way of trying to adapt is by implementing multiple player movements and gametypes that they adapted from other shooters or created on their own. This isn’t the first time we have seen a shooter do something like this. In Call of Duty 2, there was no sprint in the game but in Call of Duty 3 Activision decided that the game needed to enhance the player movement by adding it. The Call of Duty franchise also changed their games later on by adding custom loadouts, ordinances, and gametypes. The Halo community is starting to change. Some people like it, some people hate it, but the reality is that more people are starting to enjoy sprint in Halo more than they did in the past.
