These guys made the Covenant look like friendly pussycats. We think it does, and we’ll find those, and people will love playing those. In this game, we still have Chief at the center of it all, but he’s now surrounded by a team of Spartans. “In terms of the core releases for us, Halo is somewhat unique to those games”. But it takes a half-second or so. It was different. It was was constricted. You’re going to buy Halo 5 because you love it, or you’re not because you don’t.

“You don’t talk much, do ya?” asks Commander Thomas Lasky in the game’s closing cinematic, after a UNSC rescue team finds the Chief floating, alone, in the middle of space after Cortana’s death. Chief silently nods. The implications here are interesting, and I hope 343 Industries expands on them as the story goes on.

The game developer previously listed the details regarding the use of REQ points in purchasing items like weapons, armors, and vehicles for “Halo 5″ in the Halo Waypoint website. One’s been posted below for those of you who don’t mind a few mild spoilers, and the others can be found here and here.

That said, you can still die in a single blistering headshot – or a team member might struggle to reach you after all – so expect to still have those challenging moments of repeated gunfights. If you’ve ever played any console-based FPS game before, you’ll be right at home here. That started with taking out some of the turrets, minimizing resistance as I landed my ship on the Kraken.

Environments now seem bigger and more varied than in any Halo game to date. That new content is the REQ System. The AI squad controls only go so far, and aren’t always effective.

A part of me wonders whether my concern with the amount of time we’re set to spend with Locke compared to Master Chief has less to do with Locke himself and more to do with the fact I have yet to be given a compelling reason to care about his motivation.

For me, however, there was nothing worse than seeing that both weapons were out of ammo, knowing full well I was about to encounter a massive Covenant wave. Seeing three-eighths of the game’s cast die because they can’t be bothered to move rather breaks the immersion.

In an effort to make a mark on the series, 343 has added a greater sense of verticality to proceedings with Halo 5. Keeping an eye on your ammo (there’s never enough ammo), bouncing around high vantage points (Ground Pound) to avoid enemies, and remembering which ability does what leads to a lot more strategy and thinking than most Halo veterans are used to. Here, they are just obstacles. But that changes when Chief is talking all the time. Maybe 343 will change my mind. 

As to the impact of the dual-character campaign, it’s hard to judge on such slender evidence.

Halo 5’s second campaign level sees Master Chief infiltrate an ONI research spaceship.