You've played the Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer beta. Now it's time to uncover the mysteries behind the story.

We went to 343 Industries to get the first hands-on with Master Chief's campaign. As you can see from the cover imagery, the Chief is now accompanied by the legendary Blue Team in both single-player and four-player co-op. Linda, Fred, and Kelly were abducted when they were six years old alongside John to be turned into Spartan-II super soldiers. This tight-knit squad grew up together and battled through many adventures in the expanded fiction, but this will mark their first significant role in a core Halo game. With the loss of Cortana in Halo 4, Blue Team steps up to interact with Chief, appear in cutscenes, and accept commands from him in single-player. In co-op play, everyone takes on a specific member, each with a different loadout unique to their specialty.

We played an early mission set before Master Chief and Blue Team are declared AWOL by the very military that made them. The flipside of the campaign follows Spartan Jameson Locke, seen in the Halo: Nightfall TV series, as he tracks down Halo's signature hero to bring him in or take him down. Locke recruits a team of his own, Fireteam Osiris, to do the job. This mix of familiar and new faces rounds out the team of high-tech Spartan-IVs, who all come from elite military backgrounds. See if you can spot a returning fan favorite in our coverage trailer below.

Our lengthy hands-on sessions also included plenty of time in the revamped competitive Arena multiplayer. In the cover story, we break down specific changes to the Empire map from last winter's beta and we debut a never-before-seen map called Fathom. This undersea base looks gorgeous and is loaded with all kinds of hidden tricks for experienced players to dig in and discover. 343 also teases a new multiplayer mode never seen in a Halo game before. Read about all this and more in the latest issue of Game Informer.

Halo 5: Guardians is set to release on October 27 on Xbox One.



Click the above image to see the full cover spread



Above: Watch our coverage trailer to get a sneak peek at our month of exclusive content and an early look at the game (or check it out on Youtube).

In addition to our 12-page blowout on Halo 5: Guardians, we also have big features on two highly anticipated games.

Giant Squid takes us beneath the waves in out six-page piece on Abzû. Matt Nova, art director on Thatgamecompany's Flower and Journey, formed the new studio to create this unique, underwater vision. Our hands-on time with the game shows the sense of wonder and discovery that comes with Scuba diving and proves that swimming controls can work well. Check out new screenshots and read a tease of the feature online right now.

Next we take a detailed, six-page look at Skylanders: SuperChargers. Activision may have innovated with lucrative toys-to-life genre of gaming, but now we find out what it's doing to stay ahead of the increasingly-crowded pack. Its solution? Vehicles. This centerpiece affects the entire flow of the game, morphing it into a hybrid of action, racing, and flight genres.

Finally, we go behind one of the biggest behind-the-scenes legal dramas in gaming. After being fired by Ubisoft following a brief reunion when the company bought his project from a ruined THQ, Assassin's Creed creator Patrice Désilets details the fight for his lost game and offers new details on his latest project, Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. We go in-depth with nine pages on the ongoing saga, complete remarks from Ubisoft and an evaluation from an independent legal expert.

Don't miss the rest of our exciting July issue including an interview with Ready Player One author Ernest Cline on his new book, a professional's guide to game broadcasting from the likes of Syndicate and more, a chat with Heroes of the Dorm winner Zachary "Zero" Mirman, and much more.

Print subscribers should see their issues arriving in the next week or two, but you can access it now if you subscribe digitally (available on PC/Mac, iPad,Android, and Google Play). You can also get the latest issue through third-party apps on Nook, Kindle, and Zinio starting tomorrow. To switch your print subscription to digital, click here, or to create a new subscription to the digital edition, click here.

Throughout the month, we're revealing all manner of video interviews, written features on Halo 5: Guardians, a special edition podcast, and much more. Click on the banner below to visit our Halo 5: Guardians hub and follow our coverage as it rolls out throughout the month.