New Infinity’s Armory Halo 5 Update Details Arrive

Microsoft’s 343 Industries is teasing more of what it has packed into the forthcoming Infinity’s Armory Halo 5 update. The studio provided another look at the new maps and armor sets coming with the upgrade late last week.

343 Industries discussed looming Halo 5 update in detail this week in a post on the game’s dedicated community site, Halo Waypoint. Halo 5: Guardians launched on Microsoft’s Xbox One console to high sales and lots of fanfare in October. The developer is hoping to extend the life of the game by adopting a service model for updates. The idea is pretty simple; everyone gets monthly updates at no additional charge besides the base cost of the game.

Infinity’s Armory, as Microsoft is calling the January Halo 5 update, is all about adding new play areas, new armor sets and new weapons variants. The update is a bit more low-key than the last major Halo 5 update. In December 343 Industries delivered the Forge map making tool.

The January Halo 5 Update will come with two maps. One of these maps, Urban, is another large-scale map meant for the game’s Warzone multiplayer. Riptide is for Arena, the more traditional Halo  multiplayer mode that Halo 5 offers. This week’s community post only provides a new screenshot from Riptide, but Urban is discussed in greater detail.

Multiplayer Designer Adrian Bedoya says that Urban’s focus is on vehicles. “The biggest change was done to the design of the central area of the map, making it much more terrain and vehicle focused than Noctus,” he says. Noctus is another map that is already available in Halo 5: Guardians. 343 is hopping that the pit in the middle of Urban and the dark lighting will add some new challenges.

An info-graphic provided with the community blog post reveals smaller items that will arrive in this forthcoming Halo 5 update through REQ Packs and REQ Cards. A new Enforcer Strongarm helmet and armor set are included in the update. Both are rated as rare items. The Infiltrator Saboteur armor set and helmet are rated Ultra rare, making them harder to get than Infiltrator, theoretically. The Battle Rifle is getting two new colorful weapon skins – one rare and the other legendary. A new pistol weapon skin is also rated Legendary.

Finally, there are the Atlas, Achilles and Mark V Alpha armor sets. The latter armor set is inspired by early armor that Master Chief John 117 wears in previous Halo games. Achilles is heavily inspired by warrior helmets of the ancient world. The Atlas armor set is all clean lines and curves.

There are tons of add-ons that 343 Industries is keeping quiet about until the Halo 5 update is closer to release. More armor sets are clearly visible in the infographic, but blurred out. Other weapon variants and weapon skins are blurred out too.

To get these items players will need to purchase REQ Packs through Halo 5 with in-game currency or money from the real world. It’s one of the trade-offs of treating Halo 5 as a service; users don’t pay for new maps, but will need to participate a lot or add cash to stay stocked with the latest weapons and gear. Cosmetic REQ Cards apply to both Arena and Warzone multiplayer. Weapons and vehicles are specifically for Warzone play.

Warzone players will find that this Halo 5 update tweaks the game’s garbage collection setting. When someone dies now, their weapons disappear after 5 seconds due to garbage collection. Infinity’s Armory tweaks that a bit. The studio says weapons will stick around for 20 seconds instead of the 5 seconds that they used to. The Forge creation engine is getting pre-fabricated buildings with this update too.

343 Industries isn’t ready to say when this new Halo 5 update will arrive beyond sometime during the month of January.