After months of backlash, 343 Industries has finally caved to the competitive Halo community and removed “Breakout” from the Halo World Championship game type pool. The decision comes as a surprise to much of the community as many had assumed that they would continue with the already established ruleset until the end of the current season. The announcement came in the form of a post by 343i, readable here on Halo Waypoint. It is still yet to be determined if the game type will be used at the upcoming X-Games Event as it is an invitational not connected to the actual Halo World Championship. 343i will likely follow up with news on its inclusion soon as the event is only days away.
For those not familiar, Breakout is a round based game mode with the objective of players either eliminating the entire enemy team (each player only has one life per round) or capturing the flag in the centre of the map. Damage from weapons is amplified and it requires five round wins to win the game. Although traditionally played on Breakout specific maps, 343i previously introduced a new variation called “Arena Breakout”. This version of Breakout is slightly modified with traditional Arena settings and is played on regular Arena maps instead of the custom Breakout ones. After an indecisive poll that 343i administered to professional and high-level players, they decided not to replace Breakout with Arena Breakout for further HWC events.
The decision to pull Breakout from the available map poll was preceded by the release of a Team Beyond poll given out to top HWC players in order to get a firmer grasp on what the community would define as “competitive”. These results were released only hours before the decision, and as such were unlikely to have been the main factor in the decision. The results of the poll,
which can be found here, showed that 90% of the 40 polled players would like Breakout removed from the HWC. TeamBeyond also asked for other feedback, especially regarding radar and weapon balancing.
Just a few days after the release of Halo 5 at
Iron Games Daytona, we saw Fatal Ambition refuse to play out Breakout in the grand finals of the tournament against “Liquid Vibe” and instead suiciding to end the match. The incident also involved a player on the team tweeting out that the game mode was “shit”. Although many members of the community chastised the team for their actions and unsportsmanlike conduct, their sentiments about the game mode echoed throughout the scene.
It seems like the community and pro players have finally gotten their wish! Breakout will not make an appearance within the foreseeable future of the Halo World Championship! What do you think about this change? Let us know in the comments below and remember to follow us here at eSports Guru for all your competitive Halo needs!
