‘Halo 5’ Warzone Firefight First Details, Gameplay Trailer Emerge

The 2016 Halo World Championship ended Sunday night with a dominant performance by Counter Logic Gaming (CLG). 343 Industries and Microsoft spiced the proceedings up though with a first look at promised Warzone Firefight coming in a future update to Halo 5: Guardians on the Xbox One.

As suspected from the previous teaser trailer, Halo 5 will increase the number of players in Warzone Firefight. The classic modes from ODST and Reach are doubling the player count from four to eight.

“In Warzone Firefight, up to eight players will work together to complete five rounds of increasingly difficult, dynamic objectives set against a timer to emerge victorious,” the announcement on Xbox Wire declares.

The next quote is possibly the more interesting. The increased player count for the co-op multiplayer mode comes with a massive increase in the number of enemies as well.

“Warzone Firefight features the most on-screen enemies in the history of the franchise, making for frantic and exhilarating matches,” the announcement continued.

This includes new enemy bosses that are potentially more menacing than the Warden Eternal from the campaign. Halo 5 will introduce “Mythic” tier enemy bosses for players to encounter and bring down.

The Warzone REQ system will be in place during Halo 5‘s new Warzone. Players will be able to use their REQ cards to call in weapons, vehicles, power-ups, armor mods and more. This includes REQ cards for enemy items, so you could deploy a Covenant Ghost against Covenant forces, for example.

The new Warzone Firefight trailer showed the various weapons and vehicles that can be called in during a match. It also displayed a score counter in the right-hand bottom of the screen so players can measure their performance against one another.

There are also various objectives to complete, beyond just surviving. “Find and Kill Knights 2/15” was shown in part of the video, along with “Eliminate Knight Marshals.”

The one thing not explained is how players will be able to use REQs in Warzone Firefight. In the standard Warzone mode, players increase their REQ Level through by killing enemy AI and enemy players. This allows them to utilize more powerful items while also strategizing whether to go for the level 3 REQ weapon or wait to spend a card at level 5. The system will presumably remain in place, but it is possible 343 Industries will have a few tweaks in store when the mode is released this summer.

Matchmaking is another point where Halo 5 fans will just have to assume at this point. An eight-player mode definitely suggests some form of online matchmaking is in play. Whether private matches and support for smaller groups are also in play remains to be seen.

Also not known at this point is if skull modifiers will come into play. These have become a staple of Halo and the ability to add fun and/or difficult twists to the gameplay helps with longevity.

The same Warzone maps from Halo 5 will be used for Warzone Firefight. The next Halo 5 content update, Ghosts of Meridian, includes a new Warzone map.

The upcoming DLC releases are named “Ghosts of Meridian,” “Memories of Reach,” “Hog Wild,” and “Warzone Firefight.” Aside from “Warzone Firefight,” “Memories of Reach” is potentially the most interesting at the moment because of the mention of the pivotal planet in the Halo universe, plus it shows Jorge-052 in the image. Presumably, Halo players will see more Spartan armor based on the characters from Reach, but perhaps more is planned?

“Ghosts of Meridian” was scheduled to be released in late March, but has been delayed to early April. Whether 343 Industries will release two content updates in April remains to be seen. After “Ghosts of Meridian,” “Memories of Reach” was originally scheduled for April, “Hog Wild” in May, and Warzone Firefight in June. Those may now slip a month each.

What do you think of Warzone Firefight for Halo 5 so far? Sound off in the comments below.

[Image via Halo Waypoint]