A Halo 5: Guardians promotional blitz kicked off on Tuesday, ahead of next week's Electronic Entertainment Expo, with a massive cover story in the latest issue of Game Informer Magazine. In addition to a slew of single-player campaign details and even some spoilers, the feature revealed something rarely seen in a modern console shooting game: a huge swath of free multiplayer content.

As revealed by NeoGAF user shinobi602 ahead of the article's launch—and confirmed by an article screengrab—Halo 5's multiplayer modes will include "over 20 maps" when the game launches on October 27, and developer 343 Studios will make "over 15" more maps available as free DLC "by July 2016." What's more, friends who want to team up and play the game's online co-op campaign won't need an Xbox Live Gold subscription to do so (though apparently, versus multiplayer modes will still require Gold accounts). (Update: Turns out, Halo's producers misspoke to Game Informer regarding free online co-op; that will not be coming to the retail game after all, according to a Wednesday update at the game's official blog.)

"We talked a lot about the problem of dividing the player base," 343 executive producer Josh Holmes said in an interview with Game Informer. He mentioned that prior DLC packs split the player base between "the haves and the have-nots," and he said the free-DLC decision would be "really important to having a great multiplayer ecosystem."

The feature also confirmed many details about the game's campaign portion, including switching off between Master Chief and new protagonist Locke, Chief's co-op squadmates, and squad commands assigned to the Xbox controller's D-pad. The digital issue's teaser video flashed an image of Firefly actor Nathan Fillion once again reprising his Halo 3 ODST character Edward Buck, while the feature teased "a completely new, epic multiplayer experience" that will purportedly include "all aspects of the Halo sandbox for the first time ever," and that mode will be revealed next week at E3. Ars Technica is slated to try that mode out during E3, and we'll report back with impressions next week.