‘Halo 5’ Sprint And Other New Xbox One Multiplayer Features Explained By 343 Industries

Sprint and some of the other new multiplayer game mechanics are still a controversial subject for Halo 5: Guardians. 343 Industries’ Josh Holmes shared some his thoughts Saturday on the changes coming to the Xbox One exclusive shooter.

According to Holmes’ post on the Team Beyond forums, the fundamental goal that 343 Industries is aiming for is “immersion.” In other words, to make playing a Spartan seem a believable act to Xbox One owners.

Gunplay has always been a signature element of the Halo series, but movement with Sprint, Clamber, and the other Spartan abilities serve a purpose this time, according to Holmes.

“In addition to rock-solid gunplay, with [Halo 5: Guardians] we are striving to provide a focused suite of mobility-based actions that reinforce the experience of fighting as a Spartan,” he wrote. “We specifically chose to focus on mobility because it was the part of the Spartan experience that we felt was the most under-developed and had the most promise to deliver a fresh and exciting new play experience for Halo.”

Sprint was initially introduced to the Halo series as an armor ability in Halo: Reach. It was then made a permanent ability in Halo 4. The introduction of Sprint changed the feel of the series and was meant to broaden its appeal. Instead, it and other multiplayer changes like Ordnance Drops altered the gameplay enough to alienate a significant portion of the fanbase, which dropped Halo 4 much faster than any previous game.

The inclusion of Sprint is something that 343 Industries is still defending. Here is Holmes’ reasoning for its inclusion in Halo 5.

• As a Spartan, it makes sense that you can push yourself in a situation where survival is imperative. It’s an action that feels natural in the context of a firefight. It’s the extra gear that a Spartan draws upon if they focus purely on mobility and speed.
• It creates opportunities and meaningful choices on offense and defense. On offense you can commit to an aggressive push or flank at a slight cost to weapon readiness. On defense, you can try for a rapid retreat but it carries the trade-off of stalling your shield recharge. Should you be able to escape from a situation where you are over-matched or have lost the upper hand? Yes, in a skillful manner (using mobility and spatial awareness to your advantage) and so long as your opponent has opportunity to counter using their own skills. The key for us has been to balance the potential escapability of sprint with mechanics like shield recharge and sprint ramp-up, while maintaining a sprint mechanic that feels good. This is something that we will continue to focus on post-beta as this careful balance is so important.
• Sprint is also an action that the vast majority of Halo players expect to be able to utilize in both an offensive and defensive context. I know that this community does not feel that way (or likely believes that statement to be accurate), but the larger Halo community is very diverse and we are building a game for an audience with many different perspectives represented amongst them. Within that larger audience, most people expect to be able to sprint. Particularly as this is the third Halo game to feature the mechanic.
• Another important consideration for us is to keep the core play experience as consistent as possible between Campaign, Arena, and the larger MP experiences that we are building. We feel that sprint, done right, works well in Arena. I know that’s a point of significant contention amongst this community. Sprint also works tremendously well in the context of those other experiences that I mentioned. When a player crosses over from Campaign to Arena, or from Arena to big team MP, we want the mechanics to translate across consistently. It’s jarring to become accustomed to a core mechanic only to have it disappear, or vice versa. That’s something that we want to avoid.

Meanwhile, the new Ground Pound and Charge mechanics are called “crowd-pleasers” by Holmes. He includes the caveat that these will not likely be used much in competitive gaming because of their high risk.

“Other abilities are offensive in nature and more oriented toward ‘crowd-pleaser’ moves (like Charge or Ground Pound) that provide a big punctuation point in a match,” he explained. “At a competitive level you are not going to see many GPs attempted in close games because the risk is too high. But when someone does go for it and manages to land it, they deliver a big wow moment that pays off both for them and the viewers of the match.”

Holmes also points to two other major changes with Halo 5 that will serve to accommodate the new movement. The first is that the core movement mechanics were already in place when the new maps were created. The other is that 343 Industries now has an internal team of professional gamers to help with the map design and mechanics.

We will get out first taste of how this all comes together when the Halo 5 multiplayer beta is released for the Xbox One on December 29. What do you think of these changes to Halo so far? Sound off in the comments below.

[Images via Halo Waypoint]