Microsoft's play to bridge the gap between Xbox One consoles and Windows 10 PCs got a lot more interesting on Thursday thanks to a pretty major Halo 5 announcement. Microsoft and its Halo development house, 343 Industries, have taken the wraps off the awkwardly named Forge–Halo 5: Guardians Edition, which they say will launch for free across Windows 10 "later this year."

This limited free version of Halo 5 won't include the game's single-player campaign, nor will it include multiplayer matchmaking with random opponents. However, Microsoft representatives have confirmed to Ars that the free Windows 10 game will support unfettered online play with anyone on a player's friends list. That means players can create or download a Forge map and invite anyone else playing the Windows 10 version to join in and play to whatever "kill count," time limit, or other win condition they've set. Even better, Microsoft says that this friends-only multiplayer mode in Windows 10 will fully support mouse-and-keyboard game controls.

As series fans know, Halo's Forge mode allows players to build content-filled maps and lay down a litany of custom rules and modifiers for the game. This Windows 10 version, as its lengthy title suggests, will allow people to do the same thing on their PCs, complete with mouse and keyboard support that 343 Industries says will be "easier/faster" to use than an Xbox controller (though we have yet to see how keyboard shortcuts and other features will work on a PC version).

In short, free Halo 5 multiplayer is coming to Windows 10. Sure, there's a friends-list restriction, a Forge-only rule, and a lack of convenient, automated matchmaking, but it doesn't sound like a bad freebie for the PC gaming set, and it marks the first Halo online multiplayer game with mouse-and-keyboard support since 2007's Windows port of Halo 2.

The announcement also confirms support for resolutions up to 4K and the ability to publish Windows 10 creations for play on the game's Xbox One version, but there's no mention of cross-platform multiplayer (and we're certainly not counting on that addition). Microsoft has confirmed that this build of Halo 5 will use DirectX 12, but we'll be curious to see whether the results err on the glitchier side (a la the messy Windows 10 launch of Quantum Break) or the flashier side (a la the incredibly smooth, dynamically scaling brilliance of this month's Forza 6 Apex launch on Windows 10).