The highly anticipated Halo 5: Guardians will boast several exciting changes and new features, but will also remove the familiar split-screen experience.
Developer 343 Industries wanted to take things to the next level and improve the experience on all fronts, making Halo 5: Guardians more compelling and advanced. Many Halo fans, however, are puzzled by some of the new changes, especially the removal of split-screen. A series of developer blogs aims to shed more light on the matter, giving gamers some insight into the whole process.
Co-Op Experience
First of all, Halo 5: Guardians comes with some notable changes to the playing experience. While so far co-operative play was possible, it still focused on solo play because that's how it was designed.
With Halo 5: Guardians, however, 343 Industries focused more on the co-op experience as well. Previous Halo iterations focused mostly on solo play, but the latest campaign in Halo 5 is designed with multiple players in mind. Players will be able to control the leader of each Fireteam—The Master Chief or Spartan Locke—regardless of whether they're playing alone or co-op, and friends can drop in or drop out online, without interrupting the cop-op experience and fluidity.
Each of the Fireteam leaders has his own squad, and four members of that squad will be active at all times, whether you're playing solo or co-op. When friends want to join in, they simply assume the role of one of the Spartans in the squad, choosing from the male or female armies. Both achievements and collectible skulls will be simultaneously unlocked for all players in a session. If a friend has to drop out at one point, the game's AI will seamlessly take over that character without affecting gameplay in any way.
If you're playing solo, you will be able to control your squad and give them orders, such as telling them where to go, what to attack, what vehicle to use, what weapon to pick up, or what teammate to revive. Yes - revive is a new possibility with Halo 5: Guardians. Instead of dying immediately, characters now enter an injured state and other members of the squad can revive them. The aforementioned orders, meanwhile, are contextual and require only a single button press on the D-pad (up).
Developer 343 Industries further touts that different Spartans in the two squads will have different strengths and attributes. Blue Team's Linda will carry a Sniper, Blue Team's Kelly will be the fastest Spartan, while Tanaka on Locke's Fireteam Osiris will boast an extended motion tracker range. Moreover, Locke's Fireteam Osiris also has advanced technology the other team doesn't have - the Artemis Tracking System. Similar to the Halo 3: ODST VISR tech or the Halo 4 Promethean Vision, this Artemis Tracking System allows users to find points of interest by scanning the environments. It's also worth pointing out that all Spartans in the squads have personalized Heads-Up Displays (HUDs) that match their unique armors.
No Split-Screen Support
Lastly, 343 Industries also explains the move to ditch split-screen support, reckoning that it was one of the hardest decisions it had to make, but it had to be like this so it can take the gameplay to the next level and deliver a more advanced experience.
"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," the developer explains.
"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."
