Halo 5: Guardians is one of the biggest games to be coming out in 2015. Ahead of the game’s release, developer 343 Industries has revealed plans to release free maps for the title’s multiplayer modes.
343 Industries has revealed that the studio will give out over a dozen free maps after the game releases. They also revealed that players would not need Xbox Live Gold in order to play the game’s campaign cooperatively. The news comes from Game Informer, who are doing a cover story on Halo 5.
The game will come packaged with over 20 maps, and will see over 15 more being released for the game as DLC by June 2016. These maps are being given away to help keep the player base from being divided into groups of those who do own the maps and those who don’t.
Studio head Josh Holmes explains: “When you have paid map packs and content, you divide the player base into two groups: the haves and have-nots. The people that have the map pack can play together but the people who don’t cannot. That to us is a real problem. So we’re delivering all the maps to all players free so everybody will be able to play together. That, we feel, is really important to having a great multiplayer ecosystem.”
It was also announced that gamers can play Halo 5’s campaign cooperatively without having Xbox Live Gold. If you cannot play online, however, you will still have AI companions throughout the campaign (read about that here). Sadly, Halo 5 will not support split-screen co-op.
Along with this news, design director Kevin Franklin also teased about an “epic multiplayer experience” that 343 will show off at E3. “I can’t say too much about it, but I can tell you it does incorporate all aspects of the Halo sandbox for the very first time ever. This was always a dream of ours and all of our fans to build something like this. It’s been three years of long development and an incredible amount of play testing. We can’t wait to show it off.”
Halo 5 will release on October 27th. The game will be available on the Xbox One.