New Halo 5 Guardians Info, Concept Art + Speculation

Update [3/31/15]: For more in-depth speculation and a list of our theories, check out our recent article, All Hail the Conquering Halo 5 Speculation.

In case you missed the recent annoucement by Bonnie Ross, head of 343 Industries who are the creators of the new Halo Trilogy, the big news is that the next Halo title has a name and it is Halo 5 Guardians.

But wait, there's more...

The Follow-Up & Our Speculation

In a recent follow-up that was posted by Frank O'Connor (Franchise Development Director at 343), he threw out a few more tidbits and info for us. He mentioned Bonnie Ross's statement from last year's E3 of how the next version of Halo would "begin a journey" and he went on to make a few notable comments...

...well have significantly more to say about that at E3 and beyond. Suffice it to say, another shoe has yet to drop. But getting the Halo 5: Guardians announce out of the way is a big weight off our shoulders. This audience has correctly stated and assumed that you cant necessarily squish a full Halo game into anything less than a three year development schedule and at least up to and including Halo 5: Guardians, thats more or less true.

But were not just making a new game in that three year span, were also making a new engine. During the development of Halo 4, we pushed the Xbox 360 and the engine to its limits, and we were happy with the way we were able to make the Halo universe look. The Xbox 360 still has a few tricks up its sleeve, even now. We are moving to a whole new platform with the Xbox One a new architecture, new graphics hardware and bluntly some new ways to think about gaming, period.

So it's pretty obvious that they are taking Halo in a whole new direction, perhaps even a Halo Open World direction which was speculated on in a recent article of ours. The xbox 360 tech obviously couldn't handle many of Microsoft and Bungie's prior wet dreams with this idea but it appears the Xbox One might just be able to do what they had always dreamed of. Let's say they do make it open world... Will there be limitations? One could argue that there would have to be to keep the story tight and concise. Surely they don't want Masterchief roaming through the universe off task and off centered.

So a Hybrid Open World? It's interesting to think about as I remember many days in which I wish I could have flown off into any direction while playing Halo and explore. Or could this be relegated to a Multiplayer Open World much like World of Warcraft and other MMORPG's? I would bank on that being the case!

Aside from that, the nifty logo was debuted along with Masterchief and a "yet to be named" character appearing above him (seen above). There's much speculation on what this character could be. Many have stated that it is a new Spartan while some might suggest it is an alien of some sort? My money is on him being a Forerunner that Masterchief might have to battle. Sure, there is also a possiblity that he might be the next version of Spartan, Mark V, Mark VI or whatever version... But the suit and color looks too Forerunner to me to be anything else.

New concept art was also unvealed which shows some kind of desert locale which makes sense if you remember the E3 trailer from last summer in which the chief was wandering around in a poncho.