Halo 5: Guardians

Halo 5: Guardians takes place in the year 2558, and is set eight months after the events of Halo 4. The game follows the Spartan fireteams Blue and Osiris.[8] Blue Team is led by Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 (Steve Downes) and is composed of the Spartan-II teammates he fought alongside in the timeframe before Halo: Combat Evolved:[9] Petty Officer Second Class Linda-058 (Brittany Uomoleale), an elite sniper; Petty Officer Second Class Kelly-087 (Michelle Lukes), a scout known for her incredible speed and John's closest friend; and Lieutenant Junior Grade Frederic-104 (Travis Willingham), who is Blue Team's highest-ranking officer and hand-to-hand combat specialist, but defers to Master Chief.[10] The members of Blue Team are all Spartan-IIs, augmented super soldiers who were abducted and trained as children; they are among the last Spartan-IIs left alive.[10] Fireteam Osiris comprises Spartan-IVs, a newer generation of Spartans who joined the program as adult members of the military. Fireteam Osiris is led by Jameson Locke (Mike Colter), a former assassin and acquisitions agent of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and skilled tracker. The other members of Fireteam Osiris are: Holly Tanaka (Cynthia McWilliams), a combat technician and engineer in the UNSC Army and a survivor of a Covenant attack on her world; Olympia Vale (Laura Bailey), a political liaison and signals intelligence agent with ONI who can speak many of the Covenant's dialects, most notably Sangheili; and Edward Buck (Nathan Fillion), a veteran former Orbital Drop Shock Trooper with over 180 combat missions of experience, who was a main character and leader of squad Alpha-Nine in Halo 3: ODST.[11]

Supporting characters include Infinity's commanding officer, Captain Thomas Lasky (Darren O'Hare); Spartan Commander Sarah Palmer (Jennifer Hale), head of operations for all Spartan IV teams on board Infinity; Roland, Infinity's shipboard AI, and Dr. Catherine Halsey (Jen Taylor), a scientist who created the SPARTAN-II program. Other returning characters include the Arbiter Thel 'Vadam (Keith David),[12] now leading the Sangheili species as the Swords of Sanghelios against a Covenant remnant faction, led by Jul 'Mdama (Travis Willingham). Cortana (Jen Taylor), Master Chief's former AI companion who was presumed dead after the events of Halo 4, also returns.[13]

Fireteam Osiris is deployed to the planet of Kamchatka, occupied by Jul 'Mdama's splinter Covenant faction, to retrieve the rogue Dr. Halsey and her intel amidst a battle between Covenant forces and the Prometheans. Halsey claims to have information on a series of devastating attacks on several human worlds. While the team is successful in retrieving Halsey and eliminating the Covenant faction's leader Jul 'Mdama, Halsey informs them that a new threat is about to emerge.

Elsewhere, the Master Chief leads Blue Team on a mission to secure a derelict ONI research station known as Argent Moon. The arrival of Jul 'Mdama's Covenant fleet forces Blue Team to scuttle the station instead. During the sabotage, the Chief receives a cryptic message from Cortana, directing him to the planet Meridian. John is ordered to return to Infinity upon destroying Argent Moon, but he and Blue Team disobey orders and set out after Cortana, forcing Captain Lasky to list the rogue Spartans as AWOL. This causes consternation aboard Infinity, as Halsey believes that Cortana's survival through the use of Forerunner technology makes her unpredictable and untrustworthy.

Lasky tasks Fireteam Osiris with finding and capturing Blue Team. Osiris is deployed to Meridian to pursue Blue Team, where they find a human colony under attack by Promethean forces. During their pursuit, they encounter the Warden Eternal, a Promethean serving as Cortana's enforcer. After temporarily defeating the Warden, Osiris catches up to Blue Team, ordering them to stand down and return to Infinity. Chief bests Locke in hand-to-hand combat and flees with the rest of Blue Team as they board a Guardian, one of several colossal Forerunner constructs built as enforcers of entire worlds. Osiris barely escape the colony's collapse as the Guardian activates and disappears. The Guardian emerges on the Forerunner planet Genesis, where John and Cortana reunite. Cortana says that her terminal rampancy was cured by the same Forerunner technology that had saved her.

Osiris is deployed to the Sangheili homeworld of Sanghelios, where they plan to use a dormant Guardian that resides there to travel to Blue Team's location. However, the planet is engulfed in a civil war; the remaining forces of Jul 'Mdama's Covenant have chosen to make their last stand there. To hurry their mission along, Osiris joins forces with the Arbiter and help him strike a crucial blow at Jul's Covenant. Osiris boards a Guardian with the help of Commander Palmer while the Arbiter finishes off the last troops of the Covenant faction.

On Genesis, Osiris encounters the planet's caretaker, the artificial intelligence 031 Exuberant Witness, who allies with them to stop Cortana. Osiris catches up to Blue Team, who reveals that Cortana is planning on using the Guardians to achieve galactic peace through forcible disarmament. Master Chief, aware of the massive devastation that Cortana's plan will cause, attempts to convince Cortana to stand down. She refuses and confines Blue Team in a Forerunner prison in order to prevent them from interfering with her plan. Osiris manages to transfer control of Genesis back to Exuberant, who wrests the prison from Cortana as she leaves the planet via a Guardian.

Artificial intelligences across the galaxy begin swearing allegiance to Cortana and her plans. Cortana locates Infinity and prepares to disable it, but Lasky has the ship's AI Roland, who is still loyal to Infinity, engage slipspace away from Earth and commit to random jumps until they can develop a way to combat Cortana. With Blue Team recovered, Osiris returns to Sanghelios to reunite the SPARTAN-IIs with an injured Commander Palmer, Thel 'Vadam, and Halsey. If the player completes the game on Legendary, an extra cutscene shows Halo Installation 07 powering up while Cortana hums, before cutting to black.

On the departure from the Xbox 360 hardware, Ross noted that the Xbox One allows 343 Industries to broaden the game's scope, as its matchmaking and four-player online campaign co-op modes utilize the console's dedicated server support.[24] Franchise development director Frank O'Connor explained that Halo 4 pushed its game engine to the limit, such that moving on to the Xbox One called for the development of a new engine.[25]

To maintain a frame rate of 60 FPS, Halo 5's engine uses a "progressive resolution system", which automatically lowers the resolution at which the game is rendered during graphically-intensive scenes, which are then upscaled back to the game's native resolution of 1080p. Art lead Justin Dinges explained that "some sections of a mission might be relatively quiet and achieving 60fps is straightforward, but there are many situations where we dial the intensity up to 11. At those times, we need to maintain 60fps and give players the total experience from both a design and artistic perspective".[26] To achieve this, 343 Industries made extensive use of Havok.[27][28]

Eager to take advantage of the hardware, the art team built fully animated cacti that responded to gunfire, blanketing the campaign maps with the succulents. Ultimately, they proved to be the largest single technical problem in the game and had to be removed.[29]

To support the drop-in/drop-out co-op, 343 Industries built a dynamic AI system for the fireteam companions to assist the player when a session is played alone.[30]

Narrative designer Morgan Lockhart described the co-op nature of the campaign as the most difficult element of the game.[31] Speaking about Cortana's fate in Halo 4, O'Connor stated that Halo 4's story was focused on the effect that Cortana's sacrifice and loss would have on the Master Chief.[32] He also noted that this effect would be reflected in Halo 5: Guardians, with a story that explores how the Master Chief copes with loss and past memories.[32]

Creative director Tim Longo explained that one of the main goals for Halo 5: Guardians was to expand the universe.[30] To achieve this the studio created new main characters for Fireteam Osiris and introduced characters from the expanded fiction with Blue Team.[30] Early in development, the team decided that Spartan Locke would be used to present the player with a different perspective on the Master Chief.[30] The aim was to create a deliberate contrast between the two main characters.[30] In developing the characters of Fireteam Osiris, 343 Industries initially considered making the team Fireteam Majestic, using the same characters from the Halo 4 episodic series Spartan Ops. When Longo joined as creative director and the rest of the story developed, the developers decided that Majestic was the wrong team to use and set out to create a new fireteam with different characters.[33]

The unnamed fireteam comprised three Spartans: "Smith", "Jones", and "Brown". Initially, none of these characters' traits—not even their genders—were determined. The narrative team decided Smith (later Locke) would be a former ONI agent, a cross of James Bond and Lara Croft. Brian Reed recalled that at one point they had added Fireteam Majestic member Thorne, as well as Spartan leader Palmer, and a still-unnamed Jones, who would be an expert in alien languages. Spartan Jones turned into Spartan Vesper, and her character matured from a child prodigy to someone more serious, if innocent.[33]

Once part of the story became set on the planet Meridian, the narrative team decided that one of the Spartans should have grown up outside the UNSC and survived the destruction of her home planet to act as a conduit for understanding Meridian; this character, now known as Spartan Song, replaced Palmer. When Thorne's actor, Ethan Peck, was unavailable due to scheduling conflicts, 343 Industries decided to replace his character on the team roster rather than recast the role. Other suggestions included an entirely new Spartan or a member of Blue Team, but the developers decided on fan favorite Buck after Nathan Fillion became available. Spartan Smith became Spartan Locke, Vesper and Song became Vale and Tanaka, and Fireteam Osiris took shape after more than two years of changes.[33]

Halo 4's art director, Kenneth Scott, stepped down from his role in January 2014. He was succeeded by Nicolas "Sparth" Bouvier,[34] a concept artist who joined Microsoft in 2009. Bouvier described the early stages of developing artistic concepts as akin to sculpting from marble: "[we] start with a very loose idea that has trickled down from the writers or studio creative director and begin chipping away at the problem."[35] Concept artist Kory Lynn Hubbell recalled that the game's art had to be justified. "If there's no plausible story behind something, it shouldn't be there," he said, recalling that an original plan for a fountain on the mining world of Meridian was changed to a holographic tree, to reflect the desire to simulate nature in the barren landscape.[35]

343's artist and designers focused on differentiating the members of each Spartan fireteam through their design. As Locke's mission is to find Master Chief, Bouvier recalled "he reflects that visually. The design of his armor is very nonintrusive. He doesn't have any bright tones. He's gray and dark to amplify the very nondisruptive nature of his armor." In comparison, Vale's armor was sleeker to reflect her agility, and painted magenta to imply nervousness and aggression.[35]

Sataro Tojima was the audio director for Halo 5: Guardians,[36] with Japanese composer Kazuma Jinnouchi composing the original score.[36] The music was recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London and the choir was recorded at the Rudolfinum in Prague.[36][37] Jinnouchi wanted to reintroduce the original Halo theme in Halo 5: Guardians, so he composed his own interpretation of the piece.[36] A larger emphasis has been placed on the use of a choir in Halo 5: Guardians' music than Halo 4's.[36]

For the first time in Halo's multiplayer, teammates will make voiced callouts.[37] Jul's Covenant faction have conversations.[37] The audio team worked closely with the AI and narrative departments when developing the Blue Team and Team Osiris in the campaign.[37]

Executive producer, Josh Holmes stated that the development team wanted to provide much gameplay variety and support different play styles in multiplayer.[39] On launch, the game will include over twenty multiplayer maps, and the team plans to provide an additional fifteen maps as free downloadable content by June 2016.[39] 343 Industries chose to make additional maps freely available as they did not want to divide the player base.[39]

In Halo 5: Guardians' Arena mode, 343 Industries decided to exclude a loadout system so they could encourage the concept of a level playing field that was present in earlier Halo games.[30][39] The mode was inspired by older multiplayer shooters such as Quake.[40]

Warzone, one of the new multiplayer modes, was originally conceived in 2012 with a small demo set up as a four-versus-four player match with AI controlled enemies defending an objective.[41] Initially, the studio wanted to implement such a mode with Halo 4 on the Xbox 360 but they were unable to achieve their vision.[41]

A multiplayer beta for Halo 5: Guardians launched on December 29, 2014 and ran for three weeks.[42] The beta was a sample of Halo 5: Guardians' Arena gameplay, featuring three modes, seven maps and eleven weapons.[42] The development team wanted to launch a beta as early as possible so that players could test and give feedback on new gameplay elements.[30] This player feedback was used to make refinements to gameplay and adjustments to maps.[39][43] The beta used dedicated servers.[43]

The Sprint is a series about the development of Halo 5, which debuted in Xbox One's Halo Channel and was later uploaded to YouTube.[44] The first season was about the development of Halo 5's multiplayer;[45] the second season focused on the development of the Warzone game mode, and additional tweaks for the presentation at E3 2015.[46] The third season showed the development of the game's score and the use of motion capture.[47]

On March 22, 2015, Microsoft launched Hunt the Truth, an audioplay similar to radio series such as This American Life. The first season followed the investigations of fictional journalist and war photographer Benjamin Giraud (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key), who investigates the Master Chief's background.[56] Giraud discovers that the official story of Master Chief's origins are false, and attempts to expose the coverup.[57]

The first season was highly successful, drawing an audience of 6.7 million listeners on iTunes and winning Hunt the Truth's ad agency a Clio Award.[58] A second season of the podcast began September 22, 2015, focusing upon the view point of ONI Agent Maya Sankar (Janina Gavankar), returning undercover as FERO, to investigate unidentified attacks on human colonies.[59]

Microsoft began their E3 2015 press conference with gameplay from the campaign of Halo 5: Guardians. This gameplay was from a mission known as "The Battle of Sunaion" and featured Fireteam Osiris. A new multiplayer mode known as "Warzone" was also shown off at E3.[60]

Halo 5 was supported by post-release content updates. 343 head Josh Holmes explained that the studio did not want to segregate the player base by distributing maps as paid downloadable content, a goal he felt was "really important to having a great multiplayer ecosystem".[65][66]

Halo 5: Forge, a free version of Halo 5's map editing tool, containing functional multiplayer, was released for Windows 10 on September 8, 2016.[82]

First-week global sales of Halo 5 software and hardware totaled more than US$400 million, making it the fastest-selling Xbox One exclusive. Halo 5 made the biggest sales record in Xbox history, and was also the best-selling digital title.[109][110] Within its first five days of release, Halo 5 was the best-selling game of October in the United States, according to NPD Group,[111] which tracks physical sales from retailers. In November, Halo 5 was the eighth best selling game according to NPD's figures.[112]

Halo 5: Guardians was the eleventh bestselling retail game during its first week of release in Japan, with 7,455 physical copies. being sold.[113] In the United Kingdom, Halo 5 debuted on the top of the sales charts as measured by Chart-Track, besting the week's other new release, Assassin's Creed Syndicate. It outsold previous Halo release The Master Chief Collection by 50% in its first week.[114][115] The following week sales decreased 78 percent, and Halo 5 was displaced from the top of the charts by Call of Duty: Black Ops III.[116] The game was the tenth best selling title of 2015 in Australia.[117]

On June 9, 2016, Frank O'Connor said that the game managed to sell 5 million copies in the first 3 months of its release.[118] Halo 5: Guardians is the lowest selling Halo title of the franchise, in the UK.[119]

In a Q&A session, in May 2017, between Michael Pachter and his audience, the gaming analyst recounted his conversation with Microsoft regarding the success of Halo 5. Contrary to popular belief, the analyst says that Microsoft told him that the title sold “on par” with the previous four mainline Halo titles, suggesting that Halo 5 had sold at least 10 million units.[120]