Halo 5 may or may not be releasing this year but there's a good chance that multiplayer will be an important part of the game and here's a round-up of the information we have on the game's online component to date.
Earlier this month Microsoft Game Studios' President Phil Spencer commented on Twitter while referring to the game's E3 trailer that "Last year’s Halo piece was a concept around Master Chief’s journey."
He also confirmed that the trailer was not intended to represent game footage, "Yes, I've been clear on that since E3, never tried to pass that off as gameplay."
Asked about how the game actually plays, Spencer said, "Now you are trying to get me in trouble. All I can say is 343 Industries is making great progress with multiplayer a big focus right now."
His remarks follow comments made by 343 Design Director Brad Welch who tweeted in November, "Halo mutiplayer is a challenging beast. Part of my love for it is the Quake arena tradition. We didn't service this so well in Halo 4."
When it was noted that Halo 4's multiplayer allowed players to max out too quickly, Welch said, "Very fair point. I actually designed that system and feel bad that it tapped out. Major surgery pulled me out of Halo 4 a bit early."
He then added: "There was a few moving parts there that caused that, but we've fed all the stuff we didn't think went well into future plans."
There are also rumours of two multiplayer modes called War Arena and Battlefield respectively. The International Digital Times reported last year that:
"Halo War Arena is basically Halo 2 reloaded. No loadouts, no armor abilites and perks. Player Count 8-16, game types are Slayer, Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, Assault, Oddball…. Static weapon spawns, more weapons on map which means more ammo, weapons wont respawn as quick as in Halo 4.
"The second multiplayer category is titles Halo Battlefield (not final name obviously). Those are basically really big teams battles like 32-64. Gameplay is more inline with Invasion from Halo Reach. Custom Loadouts, 'armor abilites' (more like class abilites), Vehicles, Infinity like call-ins."
Either way, Microsoft has a "great plan" for Halo at E3 and we should expect more information on the game's multiplayer which will likely have beta at some point before the game's release – possibly included with sales of the rumoured Halo 2: Anniversary.
