The one thing that seems to be stuck in my head is the question I am sure everyone involved in the Sangheili community (or Sangheili fans in general) is whether or not 343industries is going to allow players to play as a Sangheili in the upcoming halo implementation: Halo 5 - Guardians.
I do understand that players may grow concerned over the availability to play as an elite effecting the multiplayer experience. However, I tend to disagree with such an argument as such ability had not negatively impacted the multiplayer in both Halo 2 and Halo 3. In fact, it gave players a sense of freedom to customize their character they way they wanted to: as a spartan or an elite. In Halo 2 you were only able to select the species of your character and the colors of his/her armor. In Halo 3 you were able to not only select the species of your character as well as change the armor colors, but you were also able to change several armor pieces to your liking as either species. Halo: Reach the best customization for spartans in terms of their armor. The elites however, were only given several armor sets players could choose from; a downside to character customization when compared to Halo 3.
The question of Sangheili being playable in Halo 5 - Guardians must also be brought up for we machinima directors. With more playable species, we are able to create a wide variety of characters for our works. The reason why Halo 4 did not produce enough quality machinimas had multitudes of reasons: horrible theatre mode, objectionable forge mode that made it difficult to render good maps, etc. The one reason that brings concern to me especially is that the freedom creating character was restricted after 343industries did not include the ability to play as an elite on Halo 4. Instead of creating both human and sangheili stories that directors had the freedom of telling, stories were only restricted to spartans. The idea of Mr. Spartan Key going rogue, getting banged by a grunt on J street, etc. may seem like a good idea when told by an experienced machinima director, sure. But the frequent repetition of such stories gets annoying and will eventually make most machinima vague - a downfall of Halo 4.
Games that allowed players to play as either Sangheili or Spartans on the other hand allowed directors to change things up. You can have a subject range from a general human-sangheili war to how one human and one sangheili made a difference to their colonies. With the ability to play as a Sangheili as well as a spartan, it feels like you have more freedom to customize your character in both machinima and general multiplayer.
Am I saying it is virtually impossible to make machinima with just an all-spartan game? Not at all - it is just that originality in machinima in terms of that game will be more restricted and will deplete faster than that of games like Halo: Reach and Halo 3.
So will Halo 5 allow players to play as a Sangheili? Perhaps more factions like the brutes or even the jackals? If so, how far could we customize those characters and how could 343industries allow players to play as such factions without it affecting the multiplayer experience?