Halo 5: Guardians E3 2015

At E3 2015 this year I was given the full Halo 5: Guardians The Experience which was essentially everything available for Halo. This was magical for me since I'm a huge Halo fan and am cautious at this evolution of Halo. First off I'm putting bullet points for four things that I gathered information on that no one else did.

-Skulls will return in Halo 5: Guardians
-With dropping in and out of Online Coop your progress/achievements will carry (waiting on follow up about if you can continue from the place you left in play)
-Cooperative matches online will be hosted on dedicated servers for perfect gameplay, solo will of course not have this
-They were somewhat sure the iconic match loading sounds and rapid tap "A" to load game faster will return (waiting on follow up)

From there I'll move onto discussion about the campaign behind closed doors tour I was given and then onto the Hololens Warzone gameplay I was able to check out twice since I got double booked.



Behind Closed Doors
Apparently we were one of the first meetings to see additional cutscenes from the campaign. I'll go into details about this as it was incredibly seeing the quality of the cutscene and seeing the Blue team in action for the first time.

Will give a small hint that they're total badasses and team Locke will have some trouble ahead of them. The clip shows Blue team flying into a ship that's been taken over by the covenant and they need to cleanse it. At this point they're still part of the UNSC working with the Infinity so it'll be interesting to see how that whole story line falls apart.

The spartans shoot a hole in the ship then just stand there using thrusters as covenant blow out into space, it was quite amazing actually and I was freaking out. Will finally mention that this portion was taken from Mission Two of the campaign.

The Campaign BCD
They also took the time to show us the footage shown during the conference in small amounts to show us the pillars of what they've been working towards. This game is the collection from seven years of foundation. No holding back this time around as it has the largest story and cast ever. The levels have also been designed for the first time to properly support four players instead of just adding extra members in.

There are more enemies and multiple vantage points to move through levels. You also now control AI and give them simple D-Pad controls in order to do things. This includes moving to areas, firing weapons or reviving. I'm not a fan of revival as that doesn't make sense within the Halo universe, but we'll see how it changes gameplay within the campaign. When joining a cooperative match players will also be able to select which AI they'd like to play as for personal preference which is nice, though the host is always the main narrative hero with Chief or Locke.

Onto the teams themselves with Blue Team featuring Master Chief, Linda, Kelly and Fred. If you're a fan of the expanded lore you love these characters and to see them together is a dream come true. The Red Team or Osiris features favorites with Locke, Buck, Tanaka and Vale. Again, expanded lore for many of these eight characters from which you'll need to do your own research on.



The Multiplayer Experience (BCD)
They also gave us some details about how multiplayer will function during the meeting after making us watch a Warzone ViDoc which I've already seen a dozen times there. Somewhat annoying as it made us run over time and took away time for more essential questions.

They wanted to be quoted that this is their biggest investment in multiplayer ever and it's been fairly impressive. We have traditional hardcore multiplayer and then Warzone which I'll discuss below. The online experience will feature over twenty multiplayer maps and an additional 15 by June 2016. All of these extra DLC maps will be free so that the community is not split, that is amazing. The Halo year round championship will also be returning for Halo 5 and it's already set up.

Hololens Halo
The biggest deal for many was the Virtual Augmented Reality was shown before playing Halo 5 Warzone. This was huge for me as I'm really excited to get Hololens when it releases and they show a lot of promise.

Though it definitely matters getting it properly set up as the first time around the people didn't do it right so it was uncomfortable whereas the second time around they were set perfectly and I thank that scientist. You prepare for the Warzone battle my following Halo waypoints added into real life and then walking into a battle room. Here holograms are projected which show off enemies and the upcoming map you're going to play on.

No matter what angle you look at it these were flawless and the Hololens was crazy. It's perfect despite being a prototype and this was genius way to show it off. Obviously no photographs were allowed during this though they sent images of what we saw and I'll put that below. I think Microsoft has a revolutionary device on the way and people need to look into this. It also might have been great to check out Hololens Minecraft though I'm not complaining.



Warzone Multiplayer
With this multiplayer mode which I'm pissed I didn't get gameplay for I was rocking it. It's a nice side activity for multiplayer and more casual players though honestly competitive players won't care for this. With twenty four total players and the biggest Halo multiplayer experience ever you battle not only each though also the AI.

Random generals and other enemies enter play for bonus points though they were extremely boring for me to attack. I honestly left those to my other teammates which themselves were useless. You can really tell when press could give a shit less since they didn't even know how to run or properly play Halo. I had between 30-40 player kills each match whereas others had about 5. It was embarrassing honestly to lose as we did get slaughtered.

Anyways, the goal is to reach 1000 total points or to blow up the enemy core. Each post has enemy AI so you have to kill them in order to take the position or progress further. There's multiple points until you reach the core and of course other AI generals for bonus score. When doing things in-game you unlock these requisition points in order to purchase a weapon or vehicle for the next life.

I got to try out all the vehicles and weapons since I was kicking ass. There were some new neat weapons though honestly rocking the BR and then a power weapon like a shotty or rocket launcher was the way to go. Also pulling out a sword I was able to get some sweet Killing Frenzy and Overkill medals. Really, really wish they would have given me some gameplay to boast with though you'll have to take my word for it.

Those are my initial thoughts from two rounds of the gametype which regular competitive players will probably just play a bit then continue on with traditional play. I hope you liked this write-up on Halo 5: Guardians and if you have questions you can write that below for which I'll try my best to answer.

All E3 2015 Coverage