Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer Beta - Eurogamer Preview
378Eurogamer's Wes and Martin discuss Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer beta in this preview video which features a huge amount of gameplay footage from the Halo 5 multiplayer beta! A lot has changed, but does it still feel like Halo? Find out all about the new Spartan Abilities, including Sprint, Clamber, Ground Pound, Slide, Charge, Smart Scope and the Thruster Pack by pressing play now!
"The first time I played Halo 5: Guardians' competitive multiplayer it felt odd because I could zoom in and fire the Assault Rifle.
Ah, the Assault Rifle - the Mario of Halo's arsenal. The default gun, the classic all-rounder: good at close range, big clip, wide spread. And, in every Halo game, fired from the hip.
But in Halo 5: Guardians, 343 Industries' second Halo game and its first for the Xbox One, firing the Assault Rifle from the hip is no longer the only option. In Halo 5: Guardians, you can zoom in and use a scope for precise damage. What's going on?
343 calls it Smart Scope. Every gun in the game, the developers tell us, has it. That means you can zoom in on the Assault Rifle and all the other UNSC weapons I got to play with: the Magnum, the Battle Rifle, the DMR, the SMG, and, of course, the Sniper Rifle.
Let's remember that you've always been able to scope with the likes of the Pistol, the Battle Rifle, the DMR and the Sniper Rifle. But in Halo 5 Smart Scope makes this look a little different in that, visually, it's almost a Call of Duty-esque "aim down sights" animation.
But it's important to note that while Smart Scope looks like ADS, at the end of the day it acts like zooming in from past Halo games. That means there's no penalty to mobility - a staple of Halo's run and gun gameplay for years.
So, you might be wondering, what's the point? Why add Smart Scope in the first place?
343 studio head Josh Holmes tells me the developers wanted to go "back to canon" by having a link between a Spartan's armour and their visor so they could provide extra information on the weapon they're holding. It's the "Smart Link" system that results in the "Smart Scope". Yes, it's kind of silly that a scope system has its own lore in a video game. But then, you know, video games."
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