Five beta-riffic features to keep in Halo 5

The public beta is over, and 343 Industries is back to work on Halo 5: Guardians. It seems half the internet’s caught up in planning welcoming parties for fictional heroes from our happy pasts. For one, we’re living in the future that Marty McFly is going back/forward to after going back in the other direction. The Master Chief, meanwhile, will return this year in the first completely original Halo adventure on the Xbox One, having bid adieu to the Xbox 360 in 2012.

Halo fans alternated between the glow of their TVs and the gleaming light of the sun/snow over the Christmas holidays as the Halo 5 online multiplayer beta ran its course. Oh, good times were had. It was bliss to have a new Halo online experience that actually worked, albeit from an unfinished game. The Master Chief Collection, released on Xbox One in November, irritated commentators and fans alike with its dodgy online matchmaking (including this guy) which still hasn’t really been fixed.

(Can we have another Halo 5 pre-launch skirmish-a-geddon, please?)

The finished product doesn’t always reflect what showed up during testing, but there were some great things going on in the Halo 5 beta that will make the wait for launch day seem uncomfortably long. If that doesn’t do it, then knowing the game probably won’t arrive until roughly Christmas will.

343 Industries this week released its first round of post-beta fixes, based on all that lovely, lovely, community feedback. So, what did we like and what’s to be done with it?

Thrusting

This sounds more NSFW than it is. The limited-range jetpack of Halos past is back, and now it’s an always-on Spartan Ability that lets you quickly take a sharp-angled turn into offensive and defensive positions, and even lets you perform shoulder blocks or Super Mario-style ground-pounds for varied play and satisfyingly crunchy kills.

In his post-beta update to the community, Halo 5 executive producer Josh Holmes describes the value of a good thrust:

Walshy came up behind an unsuspecting enemy … his opponent jumped up, using his Thrusters to propel himself back over and take him out with an assassination of his own. The stunned look on Walshy’s face was priceless.

Climbing

It sounds simple enough, but introducing a new Spartan Ability that lets your space soldier climb, well, it’s worthy of the word “gamechanger.” Just ask any evolving landfish how good it is to finally be able to scramble up to the next tree branch instead of ambling across the sand in perpetual fear of seagulls and angry little dinosaurs. (Ask said landfish once it has developed the ability to speak, of course.)

In the Halo 5 beta, the clamber technique means finding new assault routes and sniper nests faster, with more efficiency and secrecy, and it also improves your chances of hauling ass and healing-up when things are getting hot. Throw in the new sliding and diving techniques (care of the improved thruster system) and Halo‘s practically gone parkour.

It seems funny that the Halo series would introduce flight years before its lesser cousin, but it’s the newer feature that could have the biggest overall impact on online play. Climbing. Who knew?

343 says: Like other Spartan Abilities, “clamber” is slated for a general tune-up and bug fix. It looks like its here to stay, more or less as-is.

Pro tactics

Map control and clever use of the heavy weapons (whether in hand or left on the map as bait) has always been a big deal to Halo‘s top ten percent, and now it’s shaping-up as a strategy explicitly promoted to the masses. The effect on the Halo community during the beta period was profound, with the standard of play being raised by the week. It’s amazing how a simple reminder about priorities can change a gaming experience so much – encouraging complete strangers to work as a team from the get-go – and it’s exactly that kind of focus that new and rusty players will need to hang with the diehards whose planners read: “Halo, work/school, Halo, eat, Halo, maybe sleep, Halo, repeat.”

Map environments also lent themselves to some satisfying tactical play. One custom-made map, Orion, offered long-distance shooters a serious advantage if they occupied a particular high point on a structure and put their backs to the sun. It was a blindingly brilliant tactic for team play, for obvious reasons, and presented a tough challenge for the team left blinking at the sky. Teamwork is no longer optional; divided, you’ll fall. Little by little, the lone wolf is being rendered extinct.

All this feeds into an improved Competitive Skill Rating system that proritises the collective performance of the team, rather than individuals. This has splashed the writing on the wall for players who, according to the kill/death ratio stats, significantly outperform teammates on a losing side since it’s almost a given that they’ve pursued individual glory rather than working for the team’s benefit.

343 says:

In a team sport, the only thing that should matter is wins and losses. We also believe that incentivising players to prioritise their own individual stats in a team game can undermine team play.

Amen to that.

Expect to see improvements in both the pro scene and the couch scene as a result. 343’s next moves will be to fine-tune the experience, mask CSR scores until the match has begun to prevent arrogant skill fiends quitting early, improve the skill-matching during a player’s first online games, and to prevent shady players from articially boosting their skills.

Speaking of skills, check this out. Only once in 20 million beta matches did anyone manage to pull off a feat like this:

Open comms

Voice chat sucks in most online shooters. If you’re into having your mother’s honour besmirched, there are plenty of anonymous douchelords ready to oblige. Homophobia? Rampant. Morons piping tinny dubstep or top 40 pop into the game over their headsets or Kinect mics? Yes! Have two per game!

Basically, everyone with a microphone who isn’t you or a trusted Xbox Live contact is probably a huge jerkoff. Mute ’em.

Halo 5 has a sensible solution in its beta: All online participants have artificial intelligence (sometimes to compensate for the real thing, I wonder) that shows up as pre-dubbed combat lines. Your teammates’ avatars will call out context-sensitive messages during the game, such as updates on who’s snagged the heavy weapons or which areas to stay away from because the enemy’s got a tactical advantage. It’s a brilliant touch that immerses and trains the player. For the first time, you’re really encouraged to learn and improve, not just tread water.

343 says: If you don’t like the Spartan chatter, you’ll be able to turn it off. (Me? I’ll be leaving it on. It’s cool, it’s useful, and it doesn’t tell me how it met my mother.)

The gun show

Almost every weapon in the known Halo universe makes an appearance in this early iteration of Guardians, including a bowelshreddingly powerful version of the SMG, last seen in 2009’s Halo 3: ODST. It’s like greeting an old friend, if that old friend were an instrument of painful death. We’ve missed you, buddy.

All weapons have a “smart-link” aiming system which adds a zoom function to all weapons. It’s a pretty sexy touch from a graphical point of view, but it’s more than smart aesthetics – the improved weapons displays improves tactical shooting to no end. The DMR rifle’s offensive profile changes completely when it’s ranged-in, effectively putting a third weapon into a player’s arsenal. It’s just clever.

343 says: The DMR’s scoping will undergo some repairs to improve its visibility, while the fan-favourite sniper rifle will be back with a less-clunky, faster-scoping zoom. That blows – but not in a bad way.

Got all that? Sweet as. Now drink in these super-fun beta stats, and start counting down the as-yet uncountable hours until Halo 5 arrives. All going well, it’ll be the best way to waste time next Christmas.