Halo 5: Who are the Guardians, Weapon Attachments & More

We have a batch of new information regarding Halo 5: Guardians. For this one, we’re going to actual dev answers in fan threads, and some (well-reasoned) speculation from our favored sources.

So let’s start by going through Franchise Development Director Frank O’Connor’s comments on NeoGAF. We’ll just list them for you below:

• The first revealed image is not really the cover image.
• The character on the top half of the image is not a woman.
• Frank promises strong female characters in the game, but again, he stresses, the person in the image is not one. He is unequivocably a guy. On the side, they mentioned elsewhere that he is an entirely new character.
• The game will have a new engine, so no need to speculate on bringing the last Halo engine over.
• Frank has officially refuted the pastebin leak.
• Frank takes the time to explain none of Microsoft’s statements indicate any delay. Bonnie Ross’ prior statement ‘your journey begins in 2014’ was a reference to E3, not the game’s release, which they never hinted at until now. I would ding MS for perhaps a misleading statement, but not for lying or changing what they said.
• This is possibly just a personal note, but Frank is skeptical the ranking system needs to come back.

And now, for the speculation:

This may surprise you, but the Guardians have actually always been in the Halo universe. Basically, they have always been used by Microsoft as the default excuse for every time a player dies from mysterious circumstances. What this really means is any kind of death not caused by other players (falling off a height, getting hit by a Kill Ball, etc.) Now, it seems 343 Industries seems set to reveal finally, what the Guardians are all about.

Going back to that reveal image, the two weapons held by Master Chief and the other armored guy are actually recognizable. Master Chief is holding the Assault Rifle, which remains unchanged, and the Battle Rifle, which now seems to have a weapon attachment. Presumably, this is a red dot sight, but we don’t know for sure quite yet.

Halo 5: Guardians is an Xbox One exclusive slated for release 2015.