343 Industries has announced that the upcoming entry to the Halo franchise, Halo 5: Guardians, has gone gold, less than three weeks before launch. From today, preparations will be made to allow gamers who have pre-ordered via the Xbox Store to download the game in advance. After three years of development, the team will focus efforts towards testing the product, to ensure a smooth launch.
Over the coming weeks, those who have purchased the title digitally will be able to pre-load the base game before the official release. Closer to launch, a multiplayer update will be pushed, which includes tweaks made in response to internal tests. To play the game while connected to Xbox Live, downloading this update is a requirement, for all editions of the game.
Those who purchased the Halo 5-themed Xbox One console and Limited Collector’s Edition will be receiving the game a week before the official release, to pre-install via a prepaid 25-digit code. To exchange the pre-paid code for a disc, a program has been established by Microsoft.
In a post to the official Halo blog, executive producer for 343 Industries, Josh Holmes, shared an infographic to commemorate the event. The graphic highlights the core features of the game, and outlines some previously undisclosed information. It has been announced that Halo 5: Guardians" campaign will consist of fifteen story missions, with an average completion time of eight to twelve hours. Within these missions, a range of collectables will be up for grabs, including 117 Intel items, and 13 skulls. On the multiplayer side, 21 maps will be available at launch and over 18 maps will be released for free, after October 27th. Customization can be seen on a massive scale, with over one thousand REQs at launch, alongside 175 armor sets, 30 vehicle variants, and 218 emblems. The full version of the image can be seen here.
Halo 5: Guardians is scheduled to be released worldwide on October 27th, exclusively for the Xbox One.
Source: Halo Waypoint