The Mixed Legacy of Halo 5: Guardians

Halo 5: Guardians was released in 2015 as a first-person shooter video game. It was made by 343 Industries and published by Microsoft Studios. The game was available on Xbox One consoles all around the world starting October 27, 2015.

The story follows two groups of elite soldiers: Blue Team, led by Master Chief, and Fireteam Osiris, led by Spartan Locke. When Blue Team disappears without permission to find the artificial intelligence construct Cortana, people start to doubt Master Chief’s loyalty. As a result, Fireteam Osiris is sent to bring him back.

343 Industries began planning Halo 5 right after Halo 4 was released. By the end of 2012, they had set goals for the game, which included bigger campaign and multiplayer areas than before. The new game uses motion capture to make character movements look more realistic. It also has some exciting new features and characters, but it doesn’t have anything that you can play alone without an internet connection. The game’s engine is specially designed so that it can keep up with fast graphics without slowing down too much, which helps it run smoothly at 60 frames per second.

Microsoft revealed its new game at E3 in 2013. The game became extremely popular, selling over five million copies within just three months, and it’s now the second-best-selling game for Xbox One. When it came out, Halo 5 got very good reviews from critics, who liked many aspects of the game, including how it looked, its levels, and multiplayer features. But some people didn’t like the single-player part of the game as much, criticizing its story, writing, and ending. Later, a new sequel called Halo Infinite was released on December 8, 2021.

Gameplay in Halo 5: Guardians
Halo 5: Guardians is a first-person shooter where you get to be a super soldier known as a Spartan. These soldiers have many cool powers and can use various types of weapons, like guns, grenades, and hand-to-hand combat, to play through the story or team up with others in multiplayer mode. One special power of these Spartans is that they can run without stopping, which means you won’t get tired while playing. However, their special shield can’t recharge its energy in multiplayer, so it stays the same all the time. When you’re moving really fast, your character can slide on the ground or charge into enemies. A special backpack called a thruster pack lets you zoom around and even move sideways quickly. You can climb up walls to get higher, which is very helpful. Almost every weapon in the game has aiming guides that help you see where you are shooting when it’s really close-up. If you keep firing at something while using these guides, you might fall out of view. When flying through the air, you can use a special attack by targeting the ground and making it bigger. Halo 5: Guardians also comes with new guns and updated versions of old ones that work differently than before.

In the game’s campaign mode, you play as two main characters: Master Chief and Jameson Locke. Each character has a team of non-playable Spartan soldiers who stay by their side throughout the mission. When playing together with other humans, these Spartans can switch control to each player at any time. Each player controls one of these Spartans differently because they have unique gear and abilities. You can also tell computer-controlled team members what to do using simple buttons on the screen, like picking up a gun or driving a car. If one of your Spartans gets hurt too badly, they become unable to fight until someone else heals them before they die. The game gets harder based on how many human players are there.

Xbox Live’s multiplayer features a range of team-based game modes that let you compete or work together with friends. Classic four-on-four arena modes like deathmatch and capture the flag are back, as well as a new mode called Warzone. In Warzone, two teams face off against each other, with players earning points by capturing areas on the map, defeating computer-controlled bosses, or destroying the enemy team’s base. The game ends when one team wins or reaches 1000 points. Players can earn special currency called requisition points during a match, which they can use to get rewards like guns, vehicles, or power-ups dropped onto the map. These rewards come from packs that players can unlock by progressing through the game, or buy with real money. In ranked play, players compete in several matches to earn one of seven different skill ratings, which can change depending on how well they do in each game.

Halo 5 has a special tool called Forge that lets players make their own multiplayer maps. This mode uses a different way of controlling it compared to Halo 4, and it also includes new features like scripting tools that can be applied to things in the game. Unlike other first-person shooters in the Halo series, Halo 5 doesn’t have any offline multiplayer options, such as playing together with friends on the same console or competing against each other online. The game got some extra features through its website, called Halo Waypoint, where players could track their progress and statistics, and even join groups of up to 100 people to work on challenges to earn rewards that are just for fun.

Synopsis Setting and characters The year is 2558, eight months after the events of Halo 4. In this new installment, we follow two groups of highly trained warriors from the United Nations Space Command (UNSC). One team, Blue Team, is led by Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 and consists of his fellow Spartan-II supersoldiers: Linda-058, a skilled marksman; Kelly-087, an expert at reconnaissance; and Frederic-104, an expert in hand-to-hand combat. These members of Blue Team are among the last remaining Spartan-IIs still alive.

On the other side, there’s Fireteam Osiris, made up of newer generation Spartan supersoldiers, known as Spartan-IVs. Led by Jameson Locke, a former spy and tracker for the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), this team includes Holly Tanaka, an engineer and technician who survived a Covenant attack on her home world; Olympia Vale, a skilled linguist who can communicate with many different dialects from the Covenant language group; and Edward Buck, a battle-hardened trooper who appeared in Halo 3: ODST.

The supporting characters in the story include Captain Thomas Lasky, who is in charge of the UNSC ship Infinity. Sarah Palmer is the leader of the Spartan-IV teams on board Infinity and plays an important role. The AI system, Roland, helps control the ship. Dr. Catherine Halsey created the SPARTAN-II program, which developed a special team of super-soldiers. Old friends include Thel ‘Vadam, who fights against a group of Covenant warriors led by Jul ‘Mdama. Another old friend is Cortana, Master Chief’s artificial intelligence companion who was thought to be dead after Halo 4.

A fireteam called Osiris is sent to Kamchatka, where it encounters conflict between Covenant forces and Forerunner Prometheans while trying to rescue scientist Halsey. Halsey claims that she knows about several attacks on human planets that caused great damage. The team defeats Halsey’s leader and manages to capture her. Meanwhile, Master Chief leads a different team called Blue Team on a mission to protect an abandoned research facility. When they arrive, the Covenant forces show up, causing them to leave the station behind. Master Chief receives a mysterious message from his AI companion Cortana, telling him to head to Meridian, a human settlement world. His orders are to return to the spaceship Infinity, but he and Blue Team decide to disobey and continue searching for Cortana instead.

Captain Lasky calls Blue Team absent without leave; Halsey thinks that because Cortana has survived using advanced Forerunner technology, she’s now unstable and cannot be trusted. Fireteam Osiris is sent to Meridian to capture Blue Team. When they arrive on the planet, they find the colonists under attack by Promethean forces. Following Blue Team’s trail, they meet the Warden Eternal, a powerful Promethean who serves as Cortana’s protector. After temporarily beating the Warden, Osiris catches up with Blue Team and tells them to stop fighting. Chief wins against Locke in a physical fight, and then Blue Team gets on a massive Forerunner machine called a Guardian that is built to control planets. Osiris barely escapes as the Guardian suddenly activates and takes off to another planet where John and Cortana are reunited. Cortana explains that her serious condition was cured by the same advanced technology that saved her life.

Osiris is sent to the Sangheili homeworld, Sanghelios, where they intend to use an inactive Guardian buried there to track down Blue Team. The planet is in the middle of a civil war between Arbiter’s forces and the leftovers of Mdama’s army; Osiris assists Arbiter in launching an attack on the Covenant’s final stronghold and then gets on board the Guardian just before it vanishes.

In the story about the book of creation, called Genesis, there’s a powerful character named Osiris who meets an artificial intelligence being in charge of taking care of the Earth, called AI 031 Exuberant Witness. They join forces to stop another smart computer system named Cortana. Osiris catches up with his team, called Blue Team, and they tell him that Cortana has a plan to make everyone get along by forcing them to give up their weapons. The leader of the army, Master Chief, knows that this plan will cause a lot of harm and tries to convince Cortana to stop what she’s doing. But she won’t listen and puts Blue Team in prison so they can’t stop her. Luckily, AI 031 Exuberant Witness helps Osiris take back control of the planet, which frees Blue Team before Cortana leaves the Earth.

AI systems from all over the galaxy are turning against each other and pledging their loyalty to Cortana. Cortana figures out where Infinity is hiding and gets ready to take it down, but Lasky decides to pull back for now so they can come up with a way to fight back against Cortana. Once Blue Team was saved, Osiris heads back to Sanghelios to bring together the Spartans and the wounded Commander Palmer, Arbiter, and Halsey.

After finishing the game’s toughest challenge, a secret bonus scene kicks in. In this scene, a mysterious device called a Halo installation springs to life while its digital guardian, Cortana, makes a gentle humming noise.

Before Halo 4 was released in November 2012, 343 Industries’ creative director Josh Holmes started searching for someone to take over as the next game’s leader. Tim Longo joined the team later that year as creative director and quickly got involved with Halo 5, which was already a few months into development. Bonnie Ross, the general manager, remembered that after releasing Halo 4, the team spent lots of time thinking about what kind of direction they wanted to take the series in. They were trying to figure out what fans liked and didn’t like about their games, based on feedback. Longo and other game leaders, David Berger and Chris Lee, came up with a plan for the next game that included using new hardware and Microsoft’s cloud services to make bigger levels and multiplayer areas, better systems that would keep players engaged longer, and a smooth 60 frames per second movement speed.

One of Halo 5’s main objectives was to expand the universe by introducing new characters and settings, while also revisiting some familiar ones. The team behind the game, led by Longo, wanted to add more main characters beyond Master Chief and explore their personalities from different perspectives. “We initially thought about shaking things up with Master Chief,” Longo explained, which led to the idea of searching for him across multiple locations, similar to Halo 2’s alternating viewpoints. The studio aimed to contrast Master Chief and Blue Team with another team of characters. Initially, 343 Industries considered making this group Fireteam Majestic, but later decided to create a new fireteam consisting of three Spartans, which they called “Smith,” “Jones,” and “Brown.” These new Spartans were joined by Halo 4 characters Gabriel Thorne and Sarah Palmer, who would eventually become part of the team. The narrative team developed their personalities: Smith was imagined as a former intelligence agent with characteristics from James Bond and Lara Croft, while Jones, later known as Vesper, would be an expert in alien languages. When the story set its sights on the planet Meridian, the team decided that one of the Spartans should have been born outside of the UNSC and survived the destruction of her home planet to understand Meridian. This character was reworked into Spartan Song, replacing Palmer. Due to scheduling conflicts, Gabriel Thorne’s voice actor was unable to participate, so 343 Industries replaced his character on the team roster instead of recasting the role. Other options considered included a brand new Spartan or another member of Blue Team, but they ultimately chose fan favorite Buck after Nathan Fillion became available. Smith became Locke, Vesper and Song became Vale and Tanaka, and Fireteam Osiris eventually solidified over two years of development changes.

Instead of going for bigger set pieces, 343 Industries prioritized character development, making it clear that the distinction between the experienced Blue Team and new Osiris unit would be notable. When discussing Cortana’s fate in Halo 4, O’Connor said that the game’s story centered on how Cortana’s sacrifice and loss impacted the Master Chief. He also mentioned that this impact would continue to be seen in Halo 5: Guardians, with a narrative exploring how the Master Chief deals with grief and memories of his fallen friend.

When Microsoft moved away from Xbox 360 hardware, Ross noticed that Xbox One allowed 343 Industries to expand the game’s scope more than before. This was because its online multiplayer features and four-player cooperative campaign relied on the console’s dedicated server support. According to Frank O’Connor, the head of franchise development at the time, Halo 4 pushed the game engine to its limits, which meant that moving to Xbox One required building a new one. The large number of players in co-op mode prompted the studio to create more enemies and make the environment feel bigger. To support playing with friends who join or leave quickly, 343 Industries developed an advanced AI system for the team members that helps the player when they’re alone. Since performance was a priority, split-screen multiplayer, which was present in all previous Halo games, was discontinued.

To achieve a smooth 60 frames per second, Halo 5’s engine reduces the display resolution during intense scenes, then upscales it back to the original 1080p setting. To help with this, the game’s developers used powerful software called Havok. They wanted to make full use of the gaming console’s capabilities and created fully animated cacti that reacted to gunfire. Unfortunately, these special effects turned out to be a major technical challenge and had to be taken out of the final version.

In January 2014, Kenneth Scott, Halo 4’s art director, stepped down from his position. He was replaced by Nicolas “Sparth” Bouvier, a concept artist who had joined Microsoft in 2009. Bouvier described the initial stages of creating artistic concepts as similar to sculpting with marble. “We start with a rough idea that comes from the writers or studio creative director and gradually chip away at it,” he explained. Concept artist Kory Lynn Hubbell remembered that the game’s art had to make sense. “If there’s no good reason for something to be in the game, then it shouldn’t be there,” he noted, recalling a change made to an original plan for a fountain on the mining world of Meridian. The plan was changed to a holographic tree because the designers wanted to create a natural-looking environment in the barren landscape.

343’s artists and designers made sure each Spartan fireteam member had unique designs. For Locke’s mission to find Master Chief, Bouvier noted that his armor was designed to blend in visually. The armor’s gray and dark color scheme helped it stand out without being too flashy. In contrast, Vale’s armor was sleeker and painted a bold magenta to show off her agility and nervousness. As with the previous game, Halo 5 used motion capture technology to bring characters to life. To capture their performances, 343 Industries set up a large stage with multiple cameras and a special tracking system called OptiTrack that helped record every movement in 3D.

Audio Sataro Tojima led the audio department for Halo 5: Guardians, with Japanese composer Kazuma Jinnouchi creating the original soundtrack. The recording took place at Abbey Road Studios in London and the choir was recorded at the Rudolfinum in Prague. Jinnouchi aimed to revive the classic Halo theme from the previous games by crafting his own unique interpretation of it. In contrast, more emphasis was placed on using a choir in the music for Halo 5: Guardians compared to Halo 4.

In a new feature for Halo’s multiplayer mode, players can now make voice calls to their teammates to call out enemy positions or other important details. Even though it was originally designed just for enemy AI voices, this ability has been added to allow player-to-player communication too. The audio team worked closely with the AI and storytelling teams when making the Blue Team and Team Osiris characters in the game’s main story campaign.

The music for this game came out on October 30, 2015. It was available in several forms: people could buy it as a digital download, or they could have a physical copy on a CD, or even own a vinyl record. There was also a special edition that included extra goodies like two CDs, a vinyl record, and more multimedia stuff.

The development team for Halo 5’s multiplayer wanted it to offer various gameplay experiences and accommodate different playing styles. In the game’s competitive Arena mode, 343 Industries made a deliberate decision not to include a loadout system. This choice was aimed at creating an even playing field that fans of earlier Halo games had come to expect. The design of this mode was inspired by classic multiplayer shooters like Quake. A new multiplayer mode called Warzone was first conceptualized in 2012 as part of a small demo with four players against AI opponents defending a specific objective. At the time, the studio envisioned implementing a similar game mode for Halo 4 on Xbox 360 but ultimately couldn’t bring their idea to life.

The Halo 5: Guardians demo was shown at PAX Australia 2015.

In 2013, Microsoft made a big announcement about a new game in the Halo series during Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). The trailer for this new game included Master Chief. Later on, Xbox boss Phil Spencer explained that the Reclaimer Trilogy, which started with Halo 4, had grown into something much bigger than originally planned. He said the team didn’t want to only tell the story in three games. By May 2014, the title of the new game and its release date were confirmed – it would be out on Xbox One in 2015 exclusively. The final release date was revealed through live-action TV ads, which showed the game coming out on October 27, 2015.

A multiplayer beta for Halo 5 was available from December 29, 2014, until January 18, 2015. To access the beta, players had to buy Halo: The Master Chief Collection. The beta showcased three types of gameplay modes, seven different maps, and eleven weapons in a special area. The development team wanted to launch the beta early so that players could provide feedback. This feedback helped make improvements to the game’s mechanics and adjustments to the level design. The beta was played on dedicated servers. Because some people were unhappy with the way Halo: The Master Chief Collection launched, 343 Industries said they would do a better job with Halo 5.

Halo 5 was also promoted at sports events: The professional soccer team Seattle Sounders FC wore special jerseys with advertisements for the game; while racing drivers Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jamie McMurray competed in NASCAR using cars that had been specially designed to match the Halo 5 theme.

The game’s campaign mode was showcased at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2015.

A new documentary series about making The Sprint video game was shown on Xbox One’s Halo Channel and then shared online on YouTube. The first part told us how the multiplayer in Halo 5 was created; the second part explained how the Warzone mode came together, as well as some last-minute changes that were made for a big gaming show called E3 2015.

A special person in Australia got chosen to play the video game while flying high above the ground in a helicopter. A huge screen showed what was happening on the game from way up high – about 2,000 feet above the ground.

Minecraft merchandise was created specifically for fans of Halo 5, featuring game-inspired skin designs.

Microsoft introduced Hunt the Truth on March 22, 2015, an audio show similar to popular radio series like This American Life. The first season focused on the story of journalist Benjamin Giraud (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key), who became curious about the mysterious life of Master Chief. Through his investigations, Giraud uncovered some surprising information about Master Chief’s true identity and began trying to reveal the truth behind it.

The first season of the podcast was extremely popular, attracting 6.7 million listeners on iTunes and earning the ad agency behind Hunt the Truth a prestigious Clio Award. A new season of the show started on September 22, 2015, with a fresh perspective. The main character, ONI Agent Maya Sankar (played by Janina Gavankar), returned undercover as FERO to investigate strange attacks on human colonies.

Halo 5: Combat Evolved was released globally on October 27, 2015. In America, it became the first Halo game to get a Teen rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board instead of a Mature rating. Microsoft executive Aaron Greenberg thought that the M ratings for previous games were surprising given how little graphic violence there was in them. However, he believed that the new Teen rating would attract a bigger audience. The game came out in three different editions: a standard edition, a limited edition, and a collector’s edition.

The special edition included some cool extras like a bonus REQ bundle, character dossiers, a copy of the Fall of Reach film, a Guardian statue, and a “steelbook” metal case. The collector’s edition had all those things plus an extra special Master Chief and Agent Locke statue. However, instead of a physical disc, the collector’s edition came with a digital code. This was different from what some fans wanted, so Microsoft offered a limited-time deal that let people trade in their digital copy for a physical one at no cost.

After its release, Halo 5 received free updates that added new features, guns, and maps for multiplayer mode. A developer named Holmes said that the team didn’t want players to be divided into groups based on what maps they had access to. Later, a special tool called Halo 5: Forge was made available on Windows PCs with Windows 10 on September 8, 2016.

Reception of Halo 5: Guardians received an overall score of 84 out of 100 on Metacritic from 101 reviews, showing that most critics thought it was well-received. Reviewers were expecting a big improvement after Halo 4’s online issues and Microsoft’s need for a successful game to boost Xbox One sales. The developers tried to go back to the basics that made the series popular in the first place, updating the gameplay mechanics while creating an exciting co-op campaign. Many critics agreed that the new game was improved over its predecessors, with GameSpot saying it had some of the best aspects of the series nailed down in Halo 5. However, IGN thought that Halo 5 was actually a bigger game than previous ones and had the best combat seen in any Halo game. Unfortunately for some reviewers, like Destructoid’s Chris Carter, who didn’t get as excited about the game as they did with others, Halo 5 still delivered an experience that fans of Master Chief would enjoy. On the other hand, critics from GamesTM felt that Halo 5 was too cautious and unoriginal, representing a low point for the series.

Halo 5 got a lot of positive feedback overall, especially when it came to multiplayer gaming. GameSpot loved Halo 5’s multiplayer mode because it was in top shape and had a good balance of weapons that worked well together. One thing they liked about this new design was that players could get stronger guns just by playing on the map, rather than having to earn them like in the last game. The Warzone mode was also considered one of the best ideas in the Halo series and in other games of its kind. It had cool mechanics that were similar to team sports, with big open spaces for action. The key to winning at Warzone was being able to adjust quickly to what was happening on the field – it wasn’t about playing a perfect game all the time, but about being ready to react and counterattack when necessary.

The campaign in Halo 5 was also praised for being challenging and having lots of secrets and hidden spots where players could find cool guns. This made the campaign really replayable and fun with friends, as GameSpot writer Albert wrote.

The artificial intelligence (AI) used in the game got mixed reviews from players. Some people thought the way the team moved around was pretty basic, but others found their conversations and help useful. A magazine called GamesTM pointed out some problems with the enemies, saying that the bosses were too powerful and that there were many ways to hurt you right away, even on easy levels. Reviewers also complained that when one of the player’s friends died, it was hard for them to revive the player, even if they were standing right next to them.

The campaign and story of Halo 5 received conflicting opinions. Some reviewers felt that it took steps backward compared to its predecessor, while others saw promise but had issues with how it executed it. According to some critics, the game’s direction seemed unoriginal and failed to deliver on what was promised in its marketing and a series of promotional videos.

For instance, one reviewer thought the story didn’t live up to expectations, feeling more predictable than exciting. Another critic said that while the plot had potential, the campaign didn’t make the most of it. The problem was that some parts felt rushed or unfinished, with characters’ motivations changing suddenly.

Many reviewers agreed that players couldn’t fully impact the storyline, and the game’s cliffhanger ended abruptly at the end of the first act. However, there were also those who praised certain aspects, like Cortana’s character development, which showed more complexity in her motives than previous villains. Additionally, some critics appreciated the background noise and conversations that helped players get to know the characters better.

The marketing campaign for the main game got some negative feedback because it didn’t match what was happening in the plot. Phil Hornshaw from Digital Trends said that the ads made it seem like there was a big emotional struggle between Chief and Osiris, but these scenes were actually really rare in the actual game. 343 later admitted they had heard complaints about not having enough Master Chief in Halo 5 and promised to focus more on him in future games.

The first week of global sales for Halo 5 software and hardware exceeded US$400 million. This impressive figure included hardware like the $500 Xbox One bundle, which helped set a new record for Xbox sales. While total software sales were not released, Halo 5 was still the biggest digital title seller. Within its first five days of release, Halo 5 became the top-selling game in the US, according to NPD Group’s tracking. By November, it ranked eighth among best-selling games based on NPD data. Later that year, Halo 5 landed as the ninth best-selling game of 2015 in the United States.

In Japan, Halo 5: Guardians sold an impressive number of physical copies during its first week of release – over 7,400 units to be exact. This made it one of the top-selling retail games that week. In the UK, Halo 5 took the top spot on the sales charts according to Chart-Track, beating out another new game, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. Interestingly, Halo 5 sold more copies in its first week than a previous Halo game called The Master Chief Collection – it was almost half as popular. However, just one week later, the game fell to second place and lost its top spot to Call of Duty: Black Ops III. In Australia, Halo 5 ended up being the tenth best-selling title of the year.

On June 9, 2016, a game developer made an important announcement about how well one of their games was selling. The game sold around 5 million copies within just three months after it came out. Unfortunately, this game did not do as well in another country called the United Kingdom.

Gaming expert Michael Pachter shared an interesting conversation he had with Microsoft about the success of Halo 5. Despite what many people think, Pachter said that Microsoft actually told him that the game performed similarly to its predecessors in terms of sales.