Halo 5 Boss: "We Took Some Digs For Storytelling"

The story for Halo 5: Guardians took a different approach than past entries in the series, as you didn't always play as series hero Master Chief. Sometimes you fought as Spartan Locke, who was leading a team to hunt Chief down. Not everyone enjoyed this deviation from past games, and one of Microsoft's top Halo bosses, franchise manager Frank O'Connor, is aware of the feedback.

"We took some digs for storytelling in Halo 5, but they were absolutely merited. We very much realized that people wanted Master Chief's story of Halo 5," he said in the latest issue of GamesTM, as reported by Wccftech (via NeoGAF). "We definitely marketed in a way that we hoped was going to bring surprise, but for some fans and certainly fans of Master Chief, it was a huge disappointment because they wanted more Chief."

O'Connor went on to say that this was a "big learning" that 343 Industries took away from Halo 5.

"Chief we tend to think of as kind of a vessel for your adventure rather than necessarily this major character in the universe. He's really just your entry into the universe," O'Connor said. "But people have become attached to him over the last fifteen years and they've started to sort of fill in the gaps that the character deliberately has for gameplay reasons with a genuine emotional attachment. We certainly underestimated that with Halo 5."

O'Connor added: "It wasn't that surprising to me, but the volume of 'give us more Chief' at the end of Halo 5 was significant and so I think if anything he's slightly more important now than he has ever been, certainly to our franchise."

He went on to tease that instead of adding more new playable characters into the Halo universe, Halo fans can expect the focus for the next Halo games to "shift the focus a little bit to making the world a little bit more realistic and compelling and, I would say, more fun for players who get to inhabit the Chief in the future, pretty much as they demanded."

The next Halo game has not been officially announced, but we know it will have split-screen. O'Connor himself said more than a year ago that Halo 6, or whatever the sequel is titled, was in the works. While a new Halo shooter probably is not coming this year, you can expect the next title will react to the feedback surrounding Halo 5's story and the concerns fans had about it.

"Doubling down on Master Chief story and the amount of focus on him was probably the easiest learning from Halo 5," he said. "That was a really simple thing to absorb and embrace."

What would you like to see from Halo 6 and its story? Let us know in the comments below!