For many Xbox One fans, Halo 5: Guardians might have been expected to be the highlight of all the announcements made at E3 2014. But as a long time Halo fan I have got to say I was a bit disappointed by what we were shown.
In a related report by The Inquisitr , the trailer for Halo: Master Chief Collection was a pleasant surprise in more than one way. First off, we learned this new central figure in the Halo mythos was not a female spartan nor was he a cyborg or alien. Instead, we found it’s a new human character called Agent Locke (who just happens to have very shapely hips). The second reason is that all of the major Halo titles will be in the Xbox One package, although it does notably skip Halo: ODST and Halo: Reach, which was Bungie’s last game in the series before 343 Industries took over.
Otherwise, the Halo 5 trailer barely showed us anything at all other than a (likely) pre-rendered scene showing a multiplayer match between blue and red spartans. We really did not get to see anything new at all and personally it was a face palm moment for me when the trailer chose to highlight how the game will be running at 60 frames per second. Does Microsoft really need to remind everyone about the issues with the Xbox One 1080p 60FPS performance levels when they should be focusing on what will set the next game apart from the competition?
Really, the most we found out about Halo 5 multiplayer came when director Frank O’Connor talked about how they’re planing on making the MP mode lean more towards eSports:
“The funny thing is we’ve seen first person shooters get more and more complex, and more and more sort of reward driven and stuff. There has been kind of a backlash about it. I think it’s a seesaw, and I think that it is tipping back towards the – and eSports is certainly driving a lot of that – is going for things that are really truly competitive rather than just sort of reward driven. But I think you can have your cake and eat it, you can have both of those sets of experiences in a game. And sort of reward people in the campaign and make sure that your multiplayer is something pure.”
Otherwise we were left wanting for more. I was really hoping that since we already know all about the Halo TV and movie that perhaps they’d try something more exciting like mixing gameplay and TV episodes with the announcement of a Spartan Ops Season 2 .
At the same time, I realize that since the Halo 5: Guardians release date is set for 2015 that means Microsoft will probably reserve most of the goodies for E3 2015. But it still would have been nice to learn just a little bit more to hold us over during the wait. What do you think?