Halo

He might very well be. Halo 5 is going in some very weird directions.

Of course, he'll probably just be a qte boss.

Looks like Ike Amadi (Javik) is Locke's voice actor for Halo 5. Colter himself apparently had scheduling conflicts with Marvel's Luke Cage, so for better and for worse, Colter only did the motion capture performance for Halo 5 before the scheduling conflict.

m.neogaf.com/showpost.php?p=169044174&postcount=1044

Hey, if Javik had been leading the team in Nightfall, it would've been much more interesting... And 3 episodes shorter. He wouldn't have let the Warden bitch slap him like that either.

Now then, with all the E3 shenanigans done with, there's that Game Informer stuff (and some additional stuff) to deal with.

-First of all, the Chief and Locke are always accompanied by 3 others, either controlled by other players or AI. They have their own loadouts at spawn and can be commanded, downed, and revived. This sounds very reminiscent Gears 3, a game that I highly enjoyed for its co-op elements in spite of losing some of the moments of isolation. I'm good with this so far, even if I can imagine the inevitable fights over who gets to play as Linda for the sniper rifle.

-What their AI will be like is unknown. Personally, I've never really had an issue with Halo's AI, even the ally AI. Largely, I found them (especially Noble Team) hampered more by poor level design in regards to the team and weapon/enemy balance. It certainly hasn't made many great strides, but one of the biggest shames of the modern era of shooters is that making more complex AI has fallen to the wayside in favor of scripted events, QTEs, and overly cinematic design. The last FPS that really impressed me with AI was probably the original FEAR many years ago. Will Halo 5 change this? Not from what I've seen so far. At the very least, having easy commands over the ally AI will alleviate many issues, even if it doesn't go much further than the Form up/hold position/fire at all/focus fire that we had in Gears or Republic Commando.

-Anyway, where we got to see Locke's Fireteam Osiris at E3, GameInformer got a look at the Chief and Blue Team. Their mission was to clear out an ONI station filled with Jul's Covenant forces. The way they described it made it sound like an open level with lots of opportunities to show off the new squad features, and I personally think it sounded like a much better level to demo than what they showed at E3. On the other hand, they probably wanted to show off the big Guardian and the Warden than the Chief roaming through gray corridors.

-The Covenant look largely unchanged from their Halo 4 appearances, for better or worse. However, they do speak english now. Gone is the misguided attempt to make them seem mor menacing by being incomprehensible. What makes me chuckle is the handwave for why they speak english now.



Let's not even get into the fact that the suit originally translated all of the alien gibberish and that even the novel released a week ago acknowledges that few Sangheili actually speak english. I just find it completely hilarious that Jul has proved to be so incompetent in this upcoming crisis with the guardians that they're willing to speak a language that isn't their own (a language of their enemies, at that) out of spite. Let's keep in mind that these were people so devoted to him that they willingly sat outside of Requiem for 4 years on his word alone; zealots that didn't even bat an eyelid that he sent Requiem into some random sun just because he had no other use for it. Unlike his great rise to power, I hope they actually show some of this downfall. Jul 'Mdama is a criminally underused character.

-At the end of the demo, we get this spoilerific revelation:



And with this, we more or less get our motivation for the Chief. He's off investigating these attacks in the colonies that are related to the Guardians and the Domain, with Cortana's cyber ghost leading him to the next one. I'm curious how prevalent Cortana will be in this game, or if the fact that she's supposed to be dead is going to be addressed by the other Spartans (Funny enough, my brother-in-law came up with the hilarious idea that they're going Spec Ops: The Line on us, and the Chief is just going crazy while Blue Team is too polite to tell him that he's just talking to an empty ammo crate).
 
-In addition to squad commands linked to the smart scope system, Locke and Fireteam Osiris also get access to the Artemis Tracking system, which is described as thus:



At first, I was hoping this would be more akin to ODST's VISR that simply highlighted potentially interesting stuff. From the E3 demo with the weapons cache, it appears to do all the work for the player in terms of telling you optimal strategies instead of letting the players figure them out for themselves. It sounds a lot like the Tactical Options callout in Crysis 2... AKA the absolute worst part of Crysis 2.

- No split-screen Co-op. That's quite a shame. I understand the technical limitations of the Xbox One, but it's still quite a shame that I probably won't be playing Halo 5 co-op with my usual group, as getting two more Xbox Ones, copies of Halo 5, and XBL Gold is a lot to ask.

- After the MCC debacle, all future Halo games will have beta tests. Good call, 343i.

- Multiplayer launches with 20 maps (to be fair, I imagine several of them will be slight  tweaks ala Truth and Regret), with at least 15 more planned as FREE DLC.

- As the bitter pill to swallow for free maps, the big Warzone gametype will feature requisition packs, very similar to Mass Effect 3's system. They can be bought with in-game currency or will real life money and they offer random customization options and one-time perks (such as being able to spawn with a particular weapon, vehicles, or powerup). How this will affect the game largely depends on how 343I balances it. Personally, I'm more worried about 343I making the kill times so fast and the balance so sporadic that Req packs are just a  complete waste.

- Lastly, a little bit on the new villain we saw at E3, the Warden Eternal. While is voice is just chipper enough to render him rather unthreatening, the fact he's able to knock Locke down so easily definitely makes him a credible threat. And now we finally have a good screenshot of him.





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 HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Oh wow, what the hell am I looking at? What joke do I make? Do I go for the Dr. Nefarious from Ratchet and Clank joke or the Dry Bones from Mario joke? How about the double-bladed hard-light sword? I'm sorry, but there's nothing about this design that I can take seriously.

With that out of the way, I do like the the base Armiger units under the Warden Eternal are differentiated by color and silhouette. This is a welcome change from the Knights where being able to tell which type you faced or what weapon they carried required them to be close to you. I still can't buy that absolutely silly looking evil skull face, though.



And I'll conclude with some extra fluff on the Armigers.

The Promethean designs in Halo 4 were really mixed, especially with the goofy glowing skull, but I could at least see where they were going with it. They didn't have a lot of personality, and their design seems woefully ineffective for their intended purpose against the Flood (with the only rationale provided for this is that the Didact was presumably bat-shit at that point), but I did find something compelling about them essentially being the synthetic equivalent of Flood Combat Forms, as well as the fact that they were literally a tortured symbol of humanity hidden behind a metal plate.

But these Armigers? I think there was more subtle art design for enemies in the original DooM. The Armiger major (in blue) even has devil horns.

And the Warden Eternal is such a clash of style and overindulgent detail that he doesn't fit in at all. Tell me this guy wouldn't be right at home in any soft sci-fi game or movie?

New vidoc, showing off a bit more of the squad dynamic , as well as the most refreshing interpretation of the S-II mindset I've seen in the 343i era.