Halo 5: Guardians gets a new update: Forge, new maps, new guns, and more

Halo fans who are itching to make their own maps can finally sate their thirst as 343 has released the latest free update to Halo 5: Guardians. In the Cartographer’s Gift update, Forge has been reintroduced to Halo 5 alongside classic weapons and armor sets like the dual tube SPNKR rocket launcher (and its 4 variants), the Mark IV Mjolnir armor, and the BR with its classic sight (now with 7 variants).

Aside from the weapons and armor sets that are going to be statistically difficult to acquire due to the dilution of the REQ collection, Cartographer’s Gift also includes a few new maps for every gamemode. Entombed and Antifreeze has been added to the Big Team Battle playlist, featuring a lunar battlefield in the orbit of a Halo installation and another snowy map, respectively. Overgrown has also been added to the regular Arena playlist, featuring a city that has been overrun by vegetation and many potential close quarter encounters. A new city map has been added to Warzone as well, dubbed the Battle of Noctus, with a layout that isn’t too dissimilar from the Escape from ARC map where the neutral zone will be hard pressed by the Armory zones, but it will give excellent map control and easy access to boss spawns.

Cartographer’s Gift will also feature some behind the scenes changes to existing maps and playlists, some tweaks to the vehicle spawns on Recurve and Guillotine (say farewell to the Scorpion and Mantis, because some Warthogs have taken their place), UI updates, and a reduction of the Free For All player limit to 6, alongside some slight playlist ranking changes.