Could only make the title so long but my preferred topic title would have been “Friendly reminder that Halo 5 does not run on a brand new engine ‘built from the ground up for Xbox One’ or anything of the sort”.
I still see excuses for the gametypes not being out at launch being attributed to the game being on a new console / new engine, which is entirely false. Recently this was confirmed by Grimbrother One in a tweet. The engine is not brand new, but heavily modified, such has been the case with every Halo game since the very first. Every time a new Halo game is being made, the engine is reworked to support better graphics, more guns, scripts, modes, etc. This is the exact same case for Halo 5; nothing different to warrant a lack of gametypes besides possibly two things; time constraints, or time gating. Time constraints being that they wanted to change the gametypes slightly and not port them directly from Halo 4 but did not have the time, and time gating meaning the gametypes are either already finished or completely ignored until post-launch to release them later to “generate hype” or to extend the life of the game.
For the record and for those who don’t know-- Halo 3 was the first Halo on the Xbox 360, a brand new console. Halo 3 had more gametypes and other features than Halo 2, adding VIP, way more custom game options, Forge, Theater, Campaign Scoring, 4-player Co-Op, toggle skulls, armor customization, more emblems, more ranking, and more weapons/vehicles. While Halo 5 does have most of those features, it goes to show that coming onto a new console (Xbox > Xbox 360 / Xbox 360 > Xbox One) does not hinder the content of the game, in fact it helps expand upon it, which Halo 5 does not do. Halo: Reach also had a massive amount of improvements compared to Halo 3, and despite being on the same console, Bungie explicitly stated they had to rework the entire engine to support their vision for the game. Even with the rework, we had, again, more features and content than the previous games, not less. More customization, more gametypes, and just in general more everything.
Halo 4 is the first game to start removing or “dumbing” down the game, and this started under 343’s tenure. This has very little to do with the engine, as in Halo 4’s code, we see scattered remains of Halo Reach, including the Target Locator, the Energy Sword, Noble Team, and the DMR.
So please, before you think and write that Halo 5 is some brand new engine, it is not. It is literally the same engine since Combat Evolved, tweaked, just like Halo 4 was a tweak of Reach, Reach was a tweak of 3, 3 was a tweak of 2, and 2 was a tweak of CE. Come up with another excuse to support the lack of content at launch and even going forward. I think it’s also worth noting that 343, as developers, have a duty to program and code, and if something is too difficult for them because “coding is hard”, then they should not be developers, since developing is too difficult for them. The excuse that “making a gametype is hard work” is about the same as “making a game is hard work”. If its too hard for you, maybe this isn’t the career path you should be taking.
Tl;dr : Halo 5 uses the same engine and there’s no reason we should have such barebones content in this game. Discuss why I’m totally wrong and you’re totally right because you think you know more than me.