343 Industries looks to atone for recent blunders with Master Chief’s latest adventure. We speak to Josh Holmes and Frank O’Connor
There can be little argument that the dominant genre of the last console generation was the FPS. A year and a half into this generation, however, and we’ve yet to see a new FPS really take centre stage. Destiny has perhaps been the most notable, though its MMO/co-op leanings aren’t to everyone’s tastes, and while Titanfall was critically acclaimed at launch, its popularity has dropped with all the velocity of one of its titular mechs.
With Halo 5: Guardians set to launch in October, 343 Industries is hopeful that it’ll be the studio responsible for the first must-have new-gen FPS, but given its disastrous Master Chief Collection launch, in order to achieve this accolade there’s a lot of trust to be regained. Fittingly, trust plays a part in the game’s storyline, which sees the player controlling two different sets of protagonists through a split narrative. Set eight months after the end of Halo 4, Guardians reunites Master Chief with his long-time Spartan-II unit Blue Team: Kelly-087, Linda-058 and Fred-104. Although his fellow Spartans are still operating under the UNSC, they – along with Chief – decide to go AWOL for reasons yet to be revealed, but likely linked to Chief’s questioning of his former beliefs.
Meanwhile, Spartan-IV super-soldier Agent Locke (as seen in Ridley Scott’s Halo: Nightfall live-action series) has been tasked with finding Master Chief. A number of colonies have been unexpectedly attacked, and it’s up to Locke – along with his Fireteam Osiris squad Buck, Tanaka and Vale – to find Chief and his Blue Team deserters and find out if they’re somehow involved. The player, then, will control both Master Chief and Agent Locke at different points in the campaign, getting to see the story from both sides as both encounter the mysterious Guardians and discover their role in proceedings.
There hasn’t been such a distinctly split narrative in a Halo game since Halo 2, but 343 Industries is adamant it wasn’t a driving force in its decision to go down the dual protagonist route. “While Halo 2 wasn’t the direct inspiration for our approach to narrative in Halo 5: Guardians, we are aware of some of the parallels between the two games,” franchise development director Frank O’Connor tells us. “One of the biggest differences in the storytelling for Halo 5 is our focus on two opposing teams of Spartans and all of the narrative possibilities that allows for.”
Instead, the studio feels that Halo 3 spin-off ODST is a more appropriate spiritual predecessor. “We’re telling a sweeping sci-fi action story, but at the same time we want to ground that with more intimate and personal moments,” O’Connor explains. “With two heroes and eight playable characters, we have a lot of room to explore the relationships between the different team members and their stories.
“It shares a couple of other aspects with Halo 3: ODST too, Nathan Fillion’s Buck for one, but also a light hint of detective story, as you’ll experience the story through the eyes of Fireteam Osiris as they stalk their prey and investigate his tracks. But in terms of atmosphere, it’s less noire, and more classic Halo spectacle and scale.”
343’s decision to give the player two different protagonists who are essentially against each other throws up some interesting challenges, particularly how to handle the potentially jarring narrative shift when changing between characters and their differing roles in the story. The studio believes this potential problem can be solved with use of the game’s supporting characters to help smooth the transition.
“I think it’s easy to think about Chief and Locke having radically different perspectives, but it’s a bit more nuanced than that,” O’Connor tells us. “Because this is always co-op, we’re able to create a meaningful ensemble approach, and you won’t be stuck to one perspective or the other, but rather get to see how the teams’ dynamics play out. Buck, for example, views Master Chief very differently than say Locke or Tanaka. Vale is far more sympathetic to Sangheili concerns and politics, and so their conversations – both in cinematics and in the thick of the action – will create a layered view of each other, and the challenges they face.”
The addition of a supporting cast also helps make up for the loss of Cortana. In past Halo games, Master Chief’s AI companion was a useful story-telling tool, conveniently filling in Master Chief (and therefore the player) with background information or key plot points any time it was deemed necessary for the narrative. Having sacrificed herself to save Master Chief in Halo 4, however, she won’t be around this time; as such, with her gone, it’s up to the other Spartans to take on her expository role.
“Having a group of Spartan teammates surrounding our heroes gives us a new opportunity for story-telling and interaction between the characters,” adds studio head Josh Holmes. “This helps fill in some of the information that would typically be provided by Cortana in previous games. One of the biggest challenges with writing for an ensemble cast like ours is finding enough time to explore each of the characters without overwhelming the player with dialogue. This is also aided by simple visuals: you’ll always know who’s talking to you via in-HUD UI elements, and while that’s hardly ground-breaking it makes it very easy to form relationships between the player and the characters, as well as handling the expository stuff that Cortana used to.”
This new emphasis on teammate interaction underlies a general focus on co-operative gameplay, with Guardians featuring notably distinct co-op characters for the first time in the series. Indeed, as Holmes confirms, “co-op was a core focus for the game from the very beginning”. He adds: “Halo has always featured co-operative play but historically players have controlled four identical clones of the Master Chief. With Guardians, each player controls a different Spartan with a unique armour design, weapon loadout and HUD design. More importantly, each character brings their own personality and perspective to the story and dialogue so that the play experience is differentiated in subtle ways. This provides the cooperative campaign experience with additional replay value.”
Solo players may be raising their eyebrows just now, and with good reason: the pain of Resident Evil 5 and its shoehorned co-op AI still lingers deep in the hearts of many single-player gamers, never to be forgotten. But Holmes is keen to stress that while there are indeed AI teammates in Guardians’ campaign should you choose to go it alone, the game’s Fireteam AI system – which lets you issue commands to the other Spartans on the battlefield – is designed to ensure minimal irritation.
“We want to ensure that fans who play Halo solo enjoy Guardians’ campaign just as much, and adding Fireteam AI was key to bringing that element of dynamic teamwork to their experience as well,” he stresses. “Our Fireteam members are capable enough to support you throughout the campaign without getting in the way. If you want additional control, we have a one-button contextual orders system. With it you can give simple commands to your teammates, ordering them to take a position, fire on your target, use a vehicle or turret and even swap weapons. Orders can make your teammates more effective if used correctly but they are never necessary and players can choose to play through the campaign without them.”
Regardless of whether you opt to take on the fight alongside human or artificial friends, you’ll be doing so against a range of enemies both familiar and new. Most notable of what’s been shown to date are new Promethean enemies, including the new Promethean Soldiers. These are the Promethean equivalent of Spartans and are designed to match your team on the battlefield. Not only can they make use of UNSC and Covenant weapons and vehicles, they can also use short-range teleportation to move quickly around the battlefield. As well as these new Prometheans, Holmes promises 343 has “evolved the abilities of the Prometheans from Halo 4 to create more interesting and challenging combat encounters”.
Though it would be unfairly disparaging to dismiss the campaign as a mere entrée to the multiplayer main course – after all, Halo is one of the few FPS series, unlike the likes of Call Of Duty and Battlefield, with a lore that fans actually care about – it does nevertheless go without saying that Guardians’ online modes are likely to be the main reason most Xbox One owners will want to buy the game. That enthusiasm will be tempered slightly this time however as, for the first time in its history a Halo game finds itself trying to convince players its online multiplayer will be up to snuff.
The problems surrounding Halo: The Master Chief Collection’s launch are well documented, with a disastrous implosion of online servers leaving players with connection issues for many months after release. Although these days it’s relatively easy to get a smooth match going, the initial problems caused so much bad publicity for the game that – much like Sony’s similar issues with DriveClub – the pre-release hype was snuffed out, and a lot of disappointed players decided to move on and jump ship to the likes of Destiny rather than wait for a fix.
343 needs to nail Halo 5’s multiplayer from day one. This is a massive turning point for the series, one that will either get Halo back on track and return it to its rightful place on the FPS throne or – should there be issues again – lead to a “fool me once” scenario that will kill any trust that remains within the Halo fanbase. Thankfully for 343, the Halo 5 multiplayer beta which ran for three weeks at the start of the year (even during The Master Chief Collection’s woes) has already gone some way to rebuilding fans’ confidence in the studio’s ability to provide a stable online experience.
“The honest answer [as to why this is] is that Halo 5: Guardians and Halo: The Master Chief Collection are built on two completely separate code bases and developed by two completely different teams,” Holmes explains. “The data they had and the challenges they faced, while immense, are an apples and oranges comparison. It’s been great to immerse ourselves as players in the classic games, but in terms of tech, it’s just a different animal. There were some platform things we were able to observe, and since the launch of the Halo: The Master Chief Collection our teams have shared some data and takeaways that have helped inform matchmaking for Halo 5: Guardians at a platform level, to ensure that we will deliver a rock solid multiplayer experience when we release in October.”
Assuming we won’t get a repeat performance of last year’s shambles, then, the other main priority for 343 is delivering a multiplayer mode that offers something different, something more than just a graphically enhanced rehash of previous Halo online skirmishes. Warzone is that mode, and from what we’ve seen of it so far it may just do to the series what Horde and Zombies did for Gears Of War and Call Of Duty respectively in the past.
Essentially combining a large team-based online multiplayer mode with single-player elements, Warzone pits two teams of twelve players head-to-head in massive maps populated by AI-controlled Covenant and Promethean enemies in an attempt to score 1000 points first. Players score points by killing not only their opponents, but also the AI-controlled Spartans fighting alongside them and the other enemies dotted around. Alternatively, they can infiltrate their foe’s base and destroy the team core located within. The edge can be gained by reaching any of the armouries or garages dotted around the maps, unlocking new weapons and vehicles using the game’s new level-based Requisition system.
As entertaining as Warzone seems, however, it’s difficult to shake the feeling that many traditional Halo players will be happy to stick with the traditional options they’re most familiar with: Slayer, Team Slayer, King Of The Hill, what have you. But Holmes is hopeful Warzone will strike a chord with the Halo multiplayer community and potentially become the game’s most popular online option.
“Ultimately it’s just a big, fun mode,” he tells us, “however we like to think there’s something in here for everyone. We’ve watched Pro Players take a clinical, surgical approach to combat and objectives, and we’ve seen casual players revel in the madness and mayhem the full sandbox enables. There are even things in this mode for RPG fans: there’s a great deal of player progress and customisation to be had, but without being so intrusive that it demands a ridiculous investment. You can either commit to the mode fully, or sample at will. Matchmaking and an in-game, per-session levelling system will ensure balanced and fun games for players of every stripe.”
Despite the addition of this new mode, 343 is also keen to avoid one of the other issues that plagued The Master Chief Collection: fragmentation of the userbase caused by too many different modes and options, thereby making it harder to start a new game. In order to do so it’s taking a step that feels radical in this day and age: on top of the 20 or so maps provided with the game, all 15 of its upcoming DLC maps will be free to every player.
“It was [an important decision for us], and it’s a hard thing to wrestle down,” Holmes tells us. “The games industry and our business model are always moving targets, and decisions that make sense at the start of a production schedule can evolve to be problems by the time you ship. So we wanted to establish a really simple commitment to players: to provide value and to maintain an un-splintered player base. We have plenty of games out there competing with us for players, without competing with ourselves. Making this content is a huge expense and a giant investment of manpower and bandwidth, but we think it’s going to be worth it in the end.”
It certainly appears – barring some unforeseen launch disaster – that Holmes is correct. So far Halo 5 looks likely to avoid the embarrassing pratfalls experienced by TMCC, and in doing so provide Xbox One owners with their first proper new-gen Halo game. It still remains to be seen whether the campaign mode’s focus on co-op will alienate solo gamers who had hoped to play through the game alone without being aided by a trio of AI squaddies, and despite 343’s best efforts it’s impossible to tell these days how stable a game’s online component will be immediately following its release. So far, though, the studio is doing everything it can to ensure that the ghosts of last year’s nightmare launch are exorcised for good, and that Halo 5 will be a rocket up the series’ tailpipe, rather than the nail in its coffin fans had been fearing just ten months ago.
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