GameSpot's The Lobby: Why Halo 5 focusing on story is a good thing

[MUSIC] Next up we're going to be talking bout the Halo 5 launch trailer that we saw recently, and we learned a lot of Halo news recently. I'm joined on the couch by Mike Mahardy and Rob Handlery. Now you guys are some of the biggest Halo fans we have in the office and I'm sure you guys have seen the trailer multiple times. We saw a little bit of the new stuff, a little bit of the old stuff. What was new in this trailer? We talked about this morning, just different enemy types that we weren't completely familiar with. We were wondering what those guys in the white were. I think we started talking about the Prometheans, right? Right, so, this Promethean character, I found out his name is called The Warden. Or he's a class of Promethean. Having played warzone game mode a couple times, a few times at E3. Those were some of the guys, the AI elements of the mode. Where you essentially, you teak up with, hey so and so, let's go out here and basically stomp over this AI boss like figure, to break up points for your team. So this [INAUDIBLE] team, guys, I was looking, I was watching the trailer as well, and they looked very Destiny like. Were those the characters you were talking about, the kind of Yeah. [LAUGH] In Halo 343's defense [UNKNOWN] started Halo 4. There's more destiny than stealing that original- Yeah, so Bungie is just cherry picking form everyone. I don't even think that's the correct use of the word, cherry picking. But, yeah there's Digitally reconstructed people, they kinda look like [UNKNOWN] as if they got [UNKNOWN] made them into Promethean's just through that process. I forget what it was called, and then the entire trailer was set to Muses Knights of Sidonia. Oh, so good. [CROSSTALK] old song and a lot of people were saying they don't want that song near Halo or a video game in general. But tell me you don't watch this trailer and just get amped as hell for this. Especially when team Osiris is jumping down the hill shotgunning people in the face. and then it's like [INAUDIBLE]. Dude it's great. It kicks in like right here, and oh man I'm amped. It was good. Well one thing we have not gotten a lot from this trailer and we haven't learned a lot in general but we're still getting these little hints. Is where this story's going. You see Master Chief and you get that there is some kind of conflict with Locke and the other Halo teams. And, Mike, you are really into Halo lore. You've read a lot of the books. Like the back and the front end. Yeah, too much. Guys like Rom, I think, you were saying that you've played a lot of Halo games, but maybe, Not to the extent of the books. Yeah, I played them all and I felt like I knew the story pretty well. And this game was one of the first times where it spun around a little bit. And it's like wait, who's? Cyrus team I get. I know Buck was from ODST. Correct? Yep. Certain characters I recognized. But, who is this team that Master Chief has? Mm-hm. And that pertains to the lure in the books. I looked it up, I did my little Wiki research, obviously. But, you find out that this team is, they're the original Spartan twos. They grew up and trained with Master Chief. And that's pretty cool. I hope they play the game and they tap on a lot of that, you know, back story. You can go into more I'm sure Mike. Oh yeah, you're right, these are pretty much the last few Spartan 2's, you know in the first, in Halo Combat Evolved, the first game, you think that Master Chief is the last one, and then you find out that, when you, after. Halo Reach you find out a few of them survived. But Halo The Fall of Reach, Eric Nieland wrote it, and it's just a prequel to the first Halo. And these are some of the original people, even before they got the muscle augmentation so they could wear the suit. Because if a normal human wears that suit, their reflex would be so fast they'll break a bone and then react to that and break another bone, just kind of kill yourself. [LAUGH] Really fast, it's gruesome in the book but They need to get these muscle augmentations, and a lot of them die off from that. But, think it's Fred, Linda, and Kelly, there each kinda specialists. Fred, or is it Sam? No, you had it right. Okay. So Fred is just the big strong one, and Linda and Kelly kinda fill out the fast and sniper roles. Right. And so it's kind of this squad-based combat. Anthony Olango is the lead designer on Republic Commando, the Star Wars game And now he's working on Halo 5, which kind of from what I've played of the campaign, it's kind of very much this, not a ton of tactics, but you can tell your teammates where to fire if you're not playing co-op. And you can tell them, you know, regroup on me and you can kind of take these branching paths. And I think that's kind of cool that it's fitting into this narrative because it seems like it's going to be a frantic narrative. You know, traditionally in Halo You're on this alien world or just this ring world, trying to figure things out. There's this mystery propelling you forward. Even in Halo 4, when you're on Requiem. But now, this just seems like it's straightforward just Team Osiris **** chasing after the Chief and the Chief. You have no idea whether he's good or bad anymore cuz I won't spoil the ending of Halo 4. I don't know how many people have finished it. But, Something happened at the end of Halo 4 that's gonna mess with his head, so now he's kind of, from what I played, messed up and you can see that and you can see that 343 is trying to push that, so I'm interested to see the dynamic between Blue Team and Osiris as they're chasing Chief. Well, if they need different teams, then it sounds like they're trying to solve a mystery, they probably should call in Fred, Velma and Shaggy. Oh my God. [LAUGH] I'm sorry. I apologize. Then the ghostbusters come in and start wrecking people too. What is that? [LAUGH] But yeah, there was one trailer where I saw there was the blue team in like a pelican [UNKNOWN] And Chief's just like flying and the other three there in the back, they're like, Dude, Chief's kinda losing his mind. Should we talk to him? What's going on with this guy? And you know, he's just gung-ho. I don't like it. [LAUGH] And that's what's funny, because these are the people that he grew up with. The [UNKNOWN] program is really messed Catherine Halsey's character would come in, abduct these kids who were showing signs of promise. Clone them, give the clones to the parents. She literally took John from a playground. I'm not kidding. She went to a playground, took him, put his clone on the playground. That clone went back to the parents. They have no idea that the actual John's been missing. Hello father. He went through Spartan- [INAUDIBLE] Are you okay today? You seem a little off. [LAUGH] Ashley said no to me. I don't know. Okay great. So anyway So these are the people that he's closest with in his life, aside from Cortona. And it's interesting to them. They come up in like with their hands back like, dude you all right? You sure? And then he's like **** you, we're going and everybody's just, the entire human race is kind of like, this guy is Loosing his mind and we should probably do something to stop him. We'll learn a lot more about the stories as they go along the course. But we did learn some more about how the game itself will shake out now. There's not gonna be any big game battle. But they're taking that out of the multi-player play list for a reason. Right, I think the idea is that when multi-player kicks off they want people to really dive into the new one. You know, all of the DLC for Halo 5 will be free, so, it's like you don't have to stress about that. I think, if I recall, Big Team Battles and more of the maybe oddball other ones that I didn't see on the list will come out down the road toward the end of the year. So, they're coming, you know, and personally, Warzone was So much fun. I'm really excited for that one. Yeah I think it could be the one to fill the gap left by Big Team Battle. Right. But the thing that I think maybe people are more concerned about, in which Bungie the developer has had to comment on Three four three. Three four three, not Bungie the people that left Those are. One thing's different For me [UNKNOWN]. Three for three has commented on micro transactions. And I think that can always be kind of a sword. That can be a very big, sticking point. And in this better is gonna be a micro transaction, oh man, if you wanna get these requisition packs, the reqs. You can either use in game currency or you can spend real money. How do you guys feel about that? I feel alright with what. I mean, and this was, the looming question was, what's the conversion? How much will it cost to get Rex. And so we looked it up just before. Well, they released this just a couple weeks ago I think. The price range was 2000 Rec points for, how much? $4? $3? Which basically correlates to two games, two 30 minute matches of War Zone. That's nothing to me. I'm okay with that. Mm-hm. Yeah, it seems like you're getting a fair amount of rewards from just playing. Yeah. It doesn't I just inherently don't love micro transactions in a game that's already $60 but I think this doesn't seen awful. It seems like you're getting rewarded for the amount of time you play and it doesn't seem like the money will speed, like push you pass people into big of a way, I think. It still will have a balance between you're gonna play a lot of our game we're gonna reward you for it. If you want to pay, go for it. Go for it. If you want it, I think of it as you have these three different types of wreck cards. You have your cosmetics, assassinations those are permanent just as unlocking certain weapons, vehicles are sort of the burn card. You know, use a mantis, late-game. But, it comes down to, if you were really gonna get one of these items, you know, like a mantis, and you're gonna pay the three dollars, or whatever it is, to get a couple of these guys, you still have to do, you have to play well in order to unlock it on the battle-field. So, there's still a. There's still a roadblock that's stopping people from buying tons amount of cards and using whenever you want. You have to be able to perform well on the war zone field in order to pull em out. I'm okay with that. Yeah it doesn't to be a pay to win situation or maybe, We'll find out it is when we play the game more but like you said I really don't think that's the case at all from what info they've given us. It doesn't seem like that's the case. Right and I do wonder also for the arena mode, your burn cards aren't there so they pay to win aspect is completely removed. I'm wonder if that's even gonna be an option for custom modes, maybe you can turn off any kind of aspect correlating to that. You know what I mean, for Swat maybe you can just get. Sure. Down and gritty and have just the basic power weapons on the map and that's it. Yeah, so we'll see, I don't know. So my last question talking about the story and since we have someone who is so Knowledgeable f all the intricacies of Halo. They made a big deal of being either team Master T, Team Lock. Where do you think the story is going? What is your wild fan theory for how this is actually going to play out, cause right now we don't have the game, we don't know what's going to happen. What do you think is going to happen? Personally, I would just love to see Chief just lose his mind. Just be bat **** crazy by the end. And then lock at the come in and then chief still kills him. And then you know Halo 6, chief is just a lunatic. So right, it's a trilogy part. I did hear the rumor, not the rumor the facts are that a lot of questions are gonna be laid out than more answered. So yeah, there's gonna be probably some crazy cliffhanger at the end of this. Just like there was in Halo 2. Yeah. It's just like, oh God, now I gotta wait two more years for the next one. Yeah two. Him on the forerunner. The forerunner should be the arc. Chief what are you doing on that? Yeah. Like finishing this fight and then it just cuts to the music. I could see Obviously it's the reclaimer trilogy and Chief is the reclaimer for all intents and purposes as far as we're led to believe. And I think they're pushing narrative ever since Halo four, I actually loved Halo four's story. And I think that it definitely will just leave three open and take that traditional trilogy ark of the second one being the really dark one. Right. And not necessarily leaving The resolution open for the third game. The Empire Strikes Back, so to speak. [LAUGH]. Yeah. Two Towers, Empire Strikes Back. Well, I'm interested to see where this is [LAUGH], how this is gonna pan out. Mike, Rob, thank so much for joining me. For all of you guys at home, Halo 5 launches on October 27th. That's coming up really soon. What do you think the story is gonna be or how do you think this is all gonna pan out? Let us know and thanks for watching. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO].