Josh Holmes – Studio Head on Halo 5: Guardians at 343 Industries has been very active on our forums as of late and has been replying to a lot of questions and engaging with the community with their concerns.

Last night, Holmes made two interesting posts about potential and existing gametypes in Halo 5: Guardians, specifically Invasion – a gametype from Halo: Reach and Breakout – a new gametype seen in the Halo 5: Guardians beta.

Will Invasion return for Halo 5: Guardians?:

Invasion was a gametype first seen in Halo: Reach and proved to be one of the most popular gametypes seen across all Halo titles. It featured 6v6 combat with one team being Spartans, the other being Elites. One faction would attack another factions bases and proceed to steal a bomb/core and return to their vehicle before time ran out. This gametype was sadly not featured in Halo 4 and was ‘replaced’ by Dominion, a gametype that still offered base-warfare but did not fill the gap that Invasion left.

When asked on our forums in Halo 5: Guardians would see the return of Invasion, Holmes had this to say:

“No Invasion but more to come on larger scale MP. Stay tuned!”

This news is pretty upsetting to hear if you were a huge fan of Invasion – the gametype was truly something original and obviously had a place in future titles. With E3 2015 coming up, it is likely we will see a full reveal of the “large scale MP” that 343 Industries is constantly mentioning but never talking about.

Objective in Breakout:

Breakout was a new 4v4 round-based one-life Slayer gametype in which players have no shields but increased health and die a lot faster than regular gametypes. The issue is, there was a constant possibility of a standoff because the last player alive on both teams simply wouldn’t push forward. Similar gametypes from other games like Team Fortress 2 and soon to be Destiny introduce a neutral objective that one team can capture and win the game.

This encourages players to move towards the objective and try and win the round either by capturing it or killing the enemy player also trying to approach. After a lot of beta feedback asking for a feature similar to this, Josh Holmes said this on our forums:

“The team has been experimenting with an objective (one flag). This adds depth by giving you two ways to win the round: push the flag or eliminate the opposing team. It helps address stalling/camping when the stakes are high. No guarantees it’ll ship this way but the results have been positive so far.”

This is awesome news for Breakout in general and will allow games to become a lot more intense as the timer draws closer to zero and prevent standoffs almost every-round.

If you want to check out all of Josh Holmes’ posts on our forums, be sure to click here to check them out. He’s been dropping some huge knowledge bombs lately and we are all grateful for a developer being transparent to all communities, especially considering the near-radio silence we saw with Halo 4’s development.

Excited to hear about these on-going changes to Breakout or are you sad to hear that Invasion won’t be returning? Discuss it on our forums now!