Ok, I know that I still have to play for several hours etc. however what strikes me right from beginning is, how much “Halo”-ish it feels. To be honest I was expecting same kind of fresh air, as Advanced Warfare did to CoD, but that didn’t happened. Game has sprint along with several new features but at the same it just doesn’t make using them any beneficiary. At first I’ve seen some dudes trying to dash, but with each next match, everything became more and more like Halo 2A: no one sprints, no one uses thruster pack and “smart scope” isn’t much useful in firefights, because of de-scoping. Maybe with time I’ll see some hardcore players making use of thrusterpack, however I think more likely, it’ll be just like in Halo 4, when some people tried to make use of thrusterpack, but found it (almost) useless.
Point is, that for anyone who have played newer fps, Halo just feels… boring. I know it sounds like heresy to some of you, but that’s how it is. It feels slow and very bare-boned to almost any other shooter on the market. Sure, I’ve heard that’s better, because of how it should be… But noone (except for hardcore Halo players) doesn’t care about it - if game feels boring, noone will sacrifice their time to dig in. It’s not that it’s “arena” or anything like that (I’m huge Quake fan since 1996) - even after 10 years UT2004 feels much more diverse than constant fighting upon who gets sniper rifle first (using same old AR/BR in same old way).
That’s why Halo MCC sold 2 times less than Advenced Warfare for XBox One (and it was visible even in pre-orders and first week, when matchmaking problems weren’t well-known). Halo 2 Anniversary isn’t system seller. It’s not even something, that most XBox One users are going to pick up (there are 10M consoles sold, but only 1,4M of MCC - 2.88M of CoD:AW and 2.35M of Titanfall according to VGChartz). Players nowadays just aren’t interested (not to mention that vast majority of players don’t care about Halo franchise at all and bought PS4 instead of new Xbox).
So, when it goes to Halo 5, most people who felt bored about Halo 2 Anniversary (and other Halo games before that), will simply not like Halo 5 as well. At the same time all these “true” Halo fans will say that it isn’t “Halo” because of new features (and will probably stick with H2 Anniversary or even classic titles).
To be honest, if I was playing Halo 5 multiplayer beta 10 years ago, I’ld probably be very happy with it. Right now I mostly look forward to new, epic campaign and hope that at least BTB will make better use of new features.