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October 16, 2015
The entire Halo 5 soundtrack has recently been put up online by 343 Industries. The new soundtrack can be listened to on 343's official Soundcloud page. In the past 343 has used Soundcloud to share other Halo 5 promotional content, so it's quite the surprise to see the full soundtrack go up online for free.
Most of the tracks have never been played before, whilst some of the more familiar sounds, such as the composition of Halo Canticles, may be recognized by some Halo 5 fans. In previous Halo games, the name to be remembered for Halo soundtracks was Marty O' Donnell, but this time round Kazuma Jinnouchi has been given the steering wheel. Jinnouchi has been renowned for other compositions, including the soundtrack for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
Even though the full Halo 5 soundtrack can be listened to for free on Soundcloud, the same soundtrack can be purchased in physical format on Amazon for $23. The soundtrack is available in physical CD and in Vinyl.
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October 14, 2015
343 Industries has just released a bunch of details about the upcoming matchmaking system for Halo 5. In the newly released information, 343 explained how penalties will work for bad behavior and how the new ranking system will work.
Players who repeatedly follow any of the following behaviors will be given temporary cooldowns which will prevent them from playing online matchmaking.
+ Quitting matches
+ Betrayals or team killing
+ Idling (AFK)
+ Intentional suicides
+ Excessive disconnectsThe ranking system in Halo 5 has taken an interesting redesign. Players will first have to play placement matches. Once they have 10 wins under their belt, they will be given a rank. There will be a number of different ranks including Bronze, Gold, Platinum, Onyx and Champion.
Each rank will have a number of tiers within and once a player reaches Onyx and Champion the tiers will be replaced with a MMR score, which will be their leaderboard
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October 07, 2015
343 Industries, Mojang and 4JStudios have all teamed up together to create a themed Minecraft DLC pack for Minecraft on the Xbox One and Xbox 360. This isn't the first time we've seen themed mash up packs for Minecraft on the Xbox, and in fact it's not the first time we've seen a Halo pack either.
In the past we saw a full Minecraft Halo theme which included a Halo texture pack, Halo music track and Halo map. This time, 343 Industries has worked closely with Mojang to create a Halo 5: Guardians skin pack.
Starting on October 23, players will be able to purchase a skin pack for Minecraft that adds a number of Halo skins to the game. The Halo DLC pack will only be available on Xbox One and Xbox 360.
For those that have already purchased the previous Halo mashup pack, you'll be happy to hear that this upcoming skin DLC will be available to you for free. Everybody else can pick up both the mash-up pack and the now included skins for $4.
In total there are eight different
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October 05, 2015
Halo 5: Guardians will be getting a new clan system upon launch and players can already create their own clans and add their friends. The new clan system in Halo 5 is called Spartan Companies and each company can include up to 100 players.
As well as being an opportunity for players to create a social hub for communities and friends within Halo 5, Spartan Companies can be used to bring new players together. If you visit the Spartan Companies page you will find a list of all of the clans already created and it's possible to request invitations into these companies.
A player can only be in one company at once so players will have to remain loyal to their groups. As an added incentive to try out the Spartan Companies system, when a player joins a company for the first time, they will be rewarded a REQ pack with a guaranteed cosmetic item inside.
These REQ packs can of course not be used till Halo 5 is actually available and players can only gain 1 REQ pack from Spartan
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September 27, 2015
Halo: The Master Chief Collection will soon get an update that will finally add a system to punish quitters. As it currently stands, players can quit matchmaking games half way through with very little punishment which leaves games unbalanced and unfair, especially in team games.
Thankfully 343 Industries has nearly completed development for a system that will punish and discourage quitters. Unfortunately 343 didn't go into much detail about how the Master Chief Collection will punish quitting. Instead, a small blog post was listed to explain that the upcoming patch will "address a variety of areas, including ranking, will add new systems for quitting and penalties, and will improve a number of community items."
So far, 343 Industries has not set a release date for the changes, but it would be safe to say that the new changes will be released in a patch before the end of the year. Hopefully in between now and then we'll hear some further details about exactly how the quitting
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August 08, 2015
Infection is a game mode in the Halo franchise that has been around since Halo 2. Since then it's gone through various changes and in the latest version of Halo, infected players now appear as the flood.
Whilst infection has been in practically every version of Halo, the game mode has not yet been added to the Master Chief Collection. However, if the latest news from 343 Industries is anything to go by then the game mode should be coming to MCC soon as well.
In the latest weekly blog post on Halo Waypoint, 343 Industries detailed their upcoming plans for the Master Chief Collection, whilst hinting at an upcoming Infection update.
"The playlist team continues to work on future updates, and it's quite likely that we'll be talking more about things like Infection in the coming weeks," 343 Industries stated in their blog post. For those unfamiliar with the infection game type in Halo - it works similarly to the standard FPS 'zombies' or 'infection' mode that has been in
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June 30, 2015
Recently 343 Industries revealed that there will be special REQ packs in Halo 5: Guardians that will contain a random combination of weapons and cosmetic items inside. Players can earn REQ points from playing Arena and Warzone games and can then purchase REQ packs with the points they earn.
Alternatively, players can level up their Spartan Rank and as a reward they will be given a REQ pack. Finally, 343 Industries has announced that players will be able to purchase more REQ packs with their own real world money, and as you can imagine this has caused quite a commotion in the Halo community.
As a result of the chaos this has caused, 343 Industries has spoken out to explain the REQ pack microtransactions and has made it clear that they are certainly not pay to win. Whilst REQ packs do include some weapons or other items, these can only be used in the Warzone game mode, which offers a completely different experience to the classic Halo multiplayer we're familiar with.
That
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May 01, 2015
Halo has always been a big Xbox seller, so it's not really surprising that Microsoft and 343 Industries are planning to release a limited edition Halo 5 themed Xbox One console that will come with a copy of the upcoming game.
So far we have very few details about the limited edition Halo 5 console, although we know that it is definitely coming. The news was revealed on Twitter by Josh Holmes, the studio head for Halo 5: Guardians.
Details about the limited edition console are bound to come at some point closer to the release of Halo 5. We'll be able to find out about how much the Halo 5 themed console will cost and also what it will look like. It makes sense that the console will be available on the same day Halo 5: Guardians is, which is October 27. Pre-orders for the console should hopefully open a little earlier than October 27.
Two other limited edition versions of Halo 5: Guardians have already been confirmed, with details about those being more beefy. The first
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April 04, 2015
Some new playlist changes have gone ahead in anticipation for the launch of the April update for The Master Chief Collection. The playlist changes include the introduction of Team Doubles, as well as a few other changes across the board.
Team Doubles is a pretty popular playlist that has been around since Halo 2, and it includes a variety of different game modes that can be played with 2 players on each team. The new Team Doubles playlist in The Master Chief Collection will include Halo 2 Classic, Halo 2 Anniversary, Halo 3 and Halo 4 maps.
Other changes include small tweaks to team sizes. For example, Combat Evolved team games now have 2 players on each team, instead of 2-3 players. 343 Industries have also been clear about their playlist plans for the future. The development team has revealed that they would like to add more playlists that give players a battle rifle at the start of the game, and they've expressed their interest in more team objective style playlists.
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March 29, 2015
A new blog post has been posted by 343 Industries that details some changes that will be made to Halo: The Master Chief Collection in an upcoming patch. The new patch will be releasing in April as part of the "April Update," which will include new features to matchmaking and the game in general.
Whilst a lot of the major issues with the Master Chief Collection that were apparent at launch have now been fixed, there are still some problems with the game that 343 Industries are trying to iron out. These changes include adjustments to the different game modes across various games in the collection.
In the blog post it wrote, "Based on results and feedback, we'll be looking to update team sizes and player counts across existing and upcoming playlists, including Team Doubles, as we get closer to the next update. Lastly, SWAT and Team Snipers will both make a return into the rotation in the near future, and we'll continue to evaluate playlist data to determine which playlists become