Halo 5: Guardians continues the story of the Master Chief, and introduces a brand new central character to the Halo universe – Spartan Locke.  Peace is shattered when colony worlds are unexpectedly attacked.  And when humanity’s greatest hero goes missing, Spartan Locke is tasked with hunting the Master Chief and solving a mystery that threatens the entire galaxy.

Experience the most dramatic Halo story to date in a four-player cooperative epic that spans three worlds. Challenge friends and rivals in new multiplayer modes: Warzone, massive 24-player battles, and Arena, pure 4-versus-4 competitive combat.

Co-operative play has always been a big part of Halo, allowing two or more friends to play through the campaign together. Over the years I’ve spent countless hours playing Halo co-op, as have the majority of us here at 343 Industries. It’s a source of endless fun, particularly because of the emergent play that stems from having a group of players interacting with the Halo sandbox. Yet at its core, Halo’s campaign was originally built to be a single-player experience, first and foremost. So when you joined a friend in their campaign session, you were coming along for the ride and helping to lighten the load. Mechanically, the game was designed with the single-player experience in mind and so the narrative perspective of campaign also remained focused on telling the story of a lone hero.

That changes with Halo 5: Guardians as we have committed to co-operative campaign at a fundamental level. This creative pillar has influenced many decisions throughout the game’s technology and design. While you can still expect the same great single-player experience that Halo campaigns have been known for, engaging in co-operative play gives the campaign a new level of depth and richness.

Within the campaign for Halo 5 there are two distinct modes of play – solo and co-operative – and each mode has its own separate save file. When you start a co-op session, you control the leader of each Fireteam (The Master Chief or Spartan Locke). From there you can invite friends to join your session, and they do so seamlessly. Co-op games run on dedicated servers, allowing friends to seamlessly join and take over control of another member of your Fireteam. There is no interruption to the play experience. The new player simply joins the game, chooses a character (from one of the male or female teammates), and assumes control. Any achievements, collectibles or skulls unlocked during a co-op session are granted to all of the players present at that time. If at some point in the session a friend needs to leave, they can simply drop-out without interruption and the AI takes over seamlessly, so you can continue with your game.

The decision to remove split-screen support from Halo 5: Guardians was one of the most difficult ones we’ve ever had to make as a studio. We know that for many of our fans, Halo has meant playing together with friends in the same room. We all have great memories of past Halo split-screen multiplayer matches. To move Halo’s gameplay forward and deliver a true next-gen experience, tough choices had to be made. Our decision was driven by a desire for scale, fidelity and focus to ensure that we would deliver the best quality experience possible. With Halo 5 we are delivering massive scale environments, improved AI behavior, increased visual and gameplay fidelity… something that truly takes advantage of a new platform. Many of our ambitious goals for Halo 5 would be compromised in a split-screen setting and the time spent optimizing and addressing split-screen-specific issues would take focus from building other parts of the game. Game development is a balancing act of resources, time and technology, and in this case we made the tough decision to sacrifice something that’s been near and dear to us all.