1. Never Listen To A Leak
Never listening to the completely anonymous and completely unconfirmed, and perhaps completely fictitious leak is video game fan 101. We know sensationalist fallacies when we read them... but when they're this juicy, do we really care? Whether there is truth to the leak or not, the details contained within 2013's huge leak of Halo 5: Guardians details are too tantalising to not at least pay lip service to. The leak was posted over at pastebin and can be found
here in full, but below are the tastiest morsels of Halo 5: Guardians rumours we could find. Open. World. Halo. Belay that. Open. Worlds. Halo. Yes, Halo 5: Guardians, according to this leak is rumoured to be relatively open world, with Master Chief leaving the UNSC and commandeering his own ship to visit 6-8 planned planets; each with several regions and objectives, including side missions. If that were not enough, the ships is upgradeable as weapons scavenged from the battlefield can be returned to the ships armoury, and vehicles recovered can be kept in the ships vehicle bay, although in a limited number. The Chief himself can be upgraded in limited RPG elements by finding forerunner artifacts and incorporating them into his Mjolnir Armour, allowing chief more abilities (presumably the sort of abilities we've seen with AA in Halo 4.) Massive battles with hundreds of unique AI behaviours, all powered by the cloud, not to mention dynamic lighting and weather. According to the leak, the faction of Covenant fought in Halo 4 will make a return, along with plenty of Prometheans old and new. Additionally, there are hints that Chief will be fighting the insurrectionist Humans that the Spartan IIs were originally created to combat. Again, it is probably all much too good to be true. Even if this leak did come from inside 343, the vast majority of these features will still be at the design stage, or barely implemented and certainly not guaranteed to make it to the final version of the game. With that warning clear in your mind to take all of this with a grain of salt, here is the leaker's description of a AI test battle, spelling mistakes and all, that simply sounds incredible... "To put the gameplay in campaign into perspective: The team was running an encounter test in the Halo 4 engine with prototype models. This encounter featured several hundreds of Brutes with 2 Scarabs, 10 wraiths and several ghosts and banshees fightin against one Forerunner War Sphinx and some Prometheans. Now the player could engage in that battle or just simply watch them fight (Power of the Cloud: AI in short distance to chief is process on the box; rest in the cloud) and pick off the remaing forces. Well the current player chose to engange, took his Hornet and landed it on one of the Scarabs ( the AI is amazing, the Brutes had now to choose who to fight, most forces fought against the Prometheans, a few took on the fight with chief; it really looks and feels like every single AI makes smart and menaingfull decisions)) The Player killed of the crew on the Scarab and well, thise time he doenst destroy the Core, he gets behind the wheel of the Scarav ;) All hell breaks loose, brute forces more and more engage the rogue Scarab, while the Prometheans dont really difference their enemies. And yep the Scarabs is destroyed withing seconds , thought the Player surived thanks to god-mode. Those are the kinds of encounter you will find in the final game."