Halo 5: Guardians

I recently spent more than an hour with the upcoming Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer beta. The slice of gameplay featured two modes (including one entirely new), three maps, and new match pacing thanks to Spartan upgrades.

The Halo 5 is technically called the Halo 5: Guardians Arena Beta. That’s a mouthful, but there’s a reason for the inclusion of the extra word. 343 Industries wants to make sure that Halo 5 has strong foundations for the eSports community. When the game launches, there will be a seven different tiers that players get slotted into based on the new skill rating system. The top tier is called Pro, with 343 hoping to see fans climb the ranks and make their marks.

Even seasoned Halo fans have new features to get used to in Halo 5: Guardians. The beta introduces a number of them, including some that drastically overhaul fundamentals that have been with the series since Combat Evolved.

Halo 5 introduces something called “smart scope.” It’s similar to aiming down sights in other games, but without the movement penalty. “Smart scope, or smart link is what it was known as in Halo: CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, has always been there fictionally,” says multiplayer designer Quinn DelHoyo. “This is our take on how the Spartan computer will integrate with the weapon.”

It functions with every weapon in the game, including the assault rifle and the returning SMG. It isn’t meant to replace hip firing, and it’s been carefully balanced so players don’t use it as a crutch. 

“There is a ton of critical balancing for smart scope that we had to do to retain that Halo feel,” says director of production Chris Lee. “For us, if players were in smart scope all the time, that would be failure for the feature. Hip fire is such a critical component to run-and-gun and that feel of Halo. We want to make sure hip fire has a really strong role in the game.”

Unlike some other shooters, Halo 5 knocks you out of smart scope if you’re hit. The team calls this “descaling.” “By putting descope back in, we feel we have this really interesting balance,” Lee says.

Another major change comes in the form of Halo 5’s thruster packs. Every Spartan has one, and it provides more tactical options for traversal and combat. It provided some interesting challenges and opportunities for the level designers, though.

“Throughout the process, things keep coming online. You’re making Jello, and a game is Jello,” DelHoyo explains. “As each new thing adds in, you’re shaking the Jello, and it’s wobbling. The one thing that shook it up in a fun way was clamber.” 

This new feature allows players to pull themselves up onto any ledge. Designers went back into the maps to create more options for vertical movement.

“There’s always been verticality in Halo maps, but this game really harnesses it,” DelHoyo says. “Clamber takes center stage in a lot of cases.” Because 343 didn’t want to hold players’ hands, there are no obvious decals on ledges. Instead, subtle lighting reminds players that they don’t always need to look for a staircase or ramp. Exploration might even be rewarded with small, elevated hiding spots.

We inquired about whether equipment or armor abilities are returning. For the beta at least, players shouldn’t expect them. Instead, the thruster provides some of the same functionality. 

Players can hover jump from an elevated position and hover to set up an instant kill ground pound. They can also use the infinite sprint to shoulder charge at top speed. Sprinting speeds up movement around the map, but comes at the cost of stalling the shield recharge process.

“The thruster pack abilities are the evolution of armor abilities for us,” Lee told us. “When you look at the thruster, the Spartan charge, and the ground pound, those are our evolution of armor abilities for Halo 5.” 

Lee also says that unifying the suite of abilities across players serves the goal of creating an eSports-friendly experience. “It’s really important to create a consistent control scheme and a suite of abilities that all players share, so that we can preserve the skill gap,” he explains. “It allowed us to layer in some depth.”

The beta will run from December 29, 2014, through January 18, 2015. During that time, 343 plans to evolve the experience as it gathers more data. We noticed that at the start of the Team Slayer matches, there was a note indicating “Week One - Assault Rifle Starts.”

“The beta is going to be a living beta,” DelHoyo explains. “We want to test out equal starts, and use it as a true beta, not just a fun time demo beta. This is a real beta. Week one in Slayer, everyone going to start with the assault rifle. Week two, we want to try out a different starting weapon, and so on. That is all in the name of finding out what players really like for the starting weapon and gives us that type of good balancing information.”

343 Industries will gather data throughout the three-week testing phase, all in service of creating a better experience for the retail release. “We’re going to pull a ton of back-end telemetry data and look at weapon balancing, what weapons people are using, how effective they are, and the new abilities,” Lee says. “We want to see how people are using those, map data, where people are going in the maps, and look for map exploits. We’re doing a bunch of technical stuff. Now that we’ve moved a bunch of our engine and dedicated servers to Xbox Live, we need to get service information for how the online services are running. 

We played Team Slayer on two maps. The first, Truth, is inside a covenant ship with multiple floors and a legendary energy sword called Prophet’s Bane. It has an extended lunge range when compared to regular energy swords, and the dash ability is triggered by going into smart scope mode.

The other map, Empire, takes place in an industrial building. Outside areas are also present, with one serving as a the spawn point for a sniper rifle. Map control returns, with power weapons identified and called out by the announcer to force confrontation.

The other mode we played is brand new. Breakout is tuned for fast-paced, well communicated play. With teams of four, every player is allotted only life per round. Lethality is increased to nudge players toward fighting as a pack (though not too close, because grenades are even more deadly).

When a team eliminates the entire opposing force, it earns a point. The first unit to five points wins the match.

Halo has always been a fast-paced shooter, but with the added mobility and thruster abilities, it’s white-knuckle action. I found myself moving in my chair like I haven’t since playing the original Star Fox and dodging SuperFX-powered asteroids. And yes, I probably was clenching my controller a bit too tightly.

Once I got used to the pacing though, I pulled off a couple of ground pounds, Spartan charge into an enemy from behind, and finish the match with a positive K/D. As someone who has typically been pretty mediocre at Halo multiplayer, I felt both that I had a handle on the control scheme and that there is still much more I can do to improve my play. That is to say that there is room for players of varying skills, and I can’t wait to see what the pro community does with it.

The Halo 5: Guardians beta begins on December 29 with seven maps and three modes, but you can start unlocking cosmetic upgrades for it now. For more on that, check out our coverage of the achievements you can earn in The Master Chief Collection that will give you gear for the Halo 5 beta and the full game.