Halo 5: Guardians, gameplay details and design influences revealed

At Rooster Teeth’s coverage of E3 on Youtube, 343 Industries showed off the campaign segment from the Microsoft press conference and explained what to expect from the new multiplayer gamemode Warzone, as well as how Hololens will play a role in Halo 5.

Campaign- Squadmates and influences

There will always be 4 Spartans in your team at all times. Master Chief is accompanied by the legendary Blue Team while  Agent Jameson Locke leads Fireteam Osiris. Osiris consists of himself, Edward Buck, a former ODST (who is voiced by Nathan Fillion), Olympia Vale, a Naval linguistics expert, and Holly Tanaka. Sanghelios, the homeworld of the Elites, will make an appearance as a battleground and as such, the Arbiter will play a key role in the story. Similarly, familiar faces like Dr. Catherine Halsey and Thomas Lasky will make an appearance.

If youve played Star Wars: Republic Commando, you might recognize how Locke gives orders to the NPCs, as the gameplay designer for Halo 5 was responsible for the friendly AI in Republic Commando. Among other things, you can order your teammates to interact with objects in the environment, move to and secure a location, pickup and use weapons, drive vehicles, and direct their fire towards high priority targets. From a narrative standpoint, it is stated that ODST influenced how there will be environmental story cues.

Hololens support

Halo 5 had a Hololens component at E3 that puts you inside of a virtual UNSC Infinity, at which point a waypoint will be given to you so that Spartan Sarah Palmer, commander of the Spartan IVs on the Infinity, can give you a briefing for the new multiplayer mode, Warzone.

Warzone details

A 12 vs. 12 competitive gamemode that combines PvE and PvP, Warzone starts off normally, but random events can occur such as the appearance of a Covenant boss. While you can ignore the boss, killing the boss does give a significant amount of points. Similarly, there are friendly and hostile Marines, as well as Forerunner enemies that can make an appearance.

Win conditions include the usual score based option, but there is an alternative instant win possibility where you will have to take down the shield of the enemy base by capturing the armory and garage, at which point you will have to destroy the power core in the enemy base.

The ordnance feature from Halo 4 will make a comeback to a certain degree as the Requisition system whereby (at least in Warzone), anything that you do to help your team whether it be killing other players or capturing bases will let you order weapons and vehicles. Rather than being rewarded random weapons there will be a tier system, so the higher up the Requisition ladder you can climb, the more powerful weapons and vehicles that can by ordered.