This week in video games: October 26, 2015

by Blaine Kyllo on October 26th, 2015 at 9:42 AM

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Strap in, gamers. Halo 5 releases at midnight. If that doesn’t crank you up, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate hit shelves last Friday. And on Thursday, Vancouver-area players can participate in a Rainbow Six Siege tournament.

Halo 5: Guardians will sell a few Xbox Ones

Releasing at midnight tonight (October 26) is the latest Master Chief adventure, Halo 5: Guardians. I’ve been playing the single-player campaign for a week, now, and it’s unlike any Halo experience I’ve ever had.

I like it. There’s less duplication, more scale, better story. It actually seems like it’s brought in a bit of Mass Effect. Which is fine with me, because at the same time it still feels very much like Halo.

I interviewed Bonnie Ross and Josh Holmes from 343 Industries last week, and Ross talked about how the studio is more mature now than it was three years ago when Halo 4 was being released:

“I think we were in that start-up mode of trying to put together a team which is very different from how you should normally put together a team. Because we hired, I think, 200 people in about 18 months from 57 different gaming and entertainment industries, all to work on an engine they'd never worked on before…. Creating Halo 4 was us learning how to build Halo, and I'm really proud of what the team did. With Halo 5, this is the Halo that 343 wanted to build and this is a great platform for us to build on going forward.”

343 built a new engine for the game, and Josh talked about how Halo 5 couldn’t exist on any platform other than the Xbox One:

“It really meant taking a step back and thinking about what were the bets that we wanted to make technologically with our engine and starting from the ground up and building an engine that was optimized specifically for the Xbox One. One was to move to a pure 60 FPS engine where everything from the gameplay systems to the physics and AI were all re-architected to run at 60 frames per second. And really, planting that stake was the team making the commitment to continually optimize and maintain that 60 FPS experience. That was one huge bet. Another was moving many of our systems to the cloud and embracing dedicated servers across both our campaign, co-op experience, and our multiplayer experiences. And recognizing what that could mean for us in an experience like Warzone, which is our brand new, epic multiplayer experience in Halo 5. We wouldn't be able to deliver an experience of that scale and level of complexity with AI and AI bosses fighting alongside players on massive scale maps. That's only possible because of some of those technical investments that we made in the early going in building the engine for Xbox One and then cloud computing. In the past we tried to deliver that sense of epic scale but we got into a lot of smoke and mirrors where there's the implication of things going on outside the purview of the player and in other parts of the battlefield that maybe you can't get to. The difference with Halo 5 is we wanted to bring more of that action into the playable space and allow players within the campaign experience to branch out and explore different paths simultaneously, which means a massive increase in the number of active enemy AI and much more playable space and the ability to explore different routes. And on the multiplayer side, supporting a 12-v-12 experience like Warzone, where you also have dozens of active enemy AI and vehicles and dynamic weapons and vehicle call-ins and AI bosses coming onto the battlefield. That scale is just not something that we would ever have been capable of before. And that was probably one of the most exciting parts about moving to the Xbox One.”

Halo 5 is being sold in three configurations: the basic game is $75, the limited edition, which includes some collectibles, is $120, and the limited collector’s edition, with more extras like a statue of the two main characters, is $280.

A limited edition Xbox One console, styled after the game and including a copy of the game, is being sold for $550.

Syndicate brings Assassin’s Creed to London during the Industrial Revolution

Released last Friday (October 23), the latest game in Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed parkour adventure games is set in Victorian-era London, and features two protagonists, twins Evie and Jacob Frye.

Players can switch between the twins at anytime, and each of the characters has their own talents. Evie is smart, sneaky, and quick, while Jacob is the loud, brash, brawler.

No multiplayer here. Ubisoft Quebec decided to focus all effort and resources on honing the single-player experience. It’s the first major title developed by the studio in Quebec City. I’m looking forward to spending some time with it.

Win prizes at the Rainbow Six Siege tournament on Thursday

One hundred gamers will get a chance to play Ubisoft’s upcoming tactical shooter, Rainbow Six Siege, as part of a cross-Canada tournament.

This Thursday (October 29) at the Shark Club in Richmond (10331 St. Edwards Drive), 20 teams of five players will go head-to-head in real-world combat environments. Registration for the tournament begins at 5 p.m. and the tournament begins at 6 p.m. Participants must be of legal drinking age to participate or be a spectator.

Prizes include: