During RTX 2016, A Halo panel was held to discuss some of the upcoming announcements from the franchise. In attendance were Kiki Wolfkill (343 Industries), Tom French (343 Industries), Burnie Burns (Rooster Teeth), Dan Ayoub (343 Industries), Matt Arevalo (Co-Founder at Loot Crate)
The Panel began with new campaign footage from Halo Wars 2:
(Footage from Chief Canuck)
The Beta was originally announced during E3. The infograph shows many impressive stats. In such a short amount of time there was 72,245,130 gameplay minutes spent, 80,468,490 Total Units vanquished, and 204,503,200 total units created. The Beta wrapped up on June 22nd.
343 Industries also revealed one of the seven upcoming new units to be featured in Halo Wars 2, called the Blisterback. The Blisterback is a long range heavy-artillery vehicle.
For those PC gamers who were unable to partake in the beta in June, a second multiplayer beta will run later this year on both Xbox One and Windows 10.
(Footage courtesy of reznoire)
Halo 5: Forge was the next topic at hand. Gamers will be able to share their created maps on forge between Windows 10 PC’s and Xbox One. The file browser is easy to search, navigate and cloud driven. Gamers will be able to ship game modes and maps created. The Windows 10 version will ship in the fall, no specific date given yet.
The custom maps shown during the panels was probably the most impressive part of the panel. There was a toilet level created where you are launched into a Toilet and the “Infected” come flying out of the toilet and you have to take them down before they take you down.
Burnie Burns also briefly discussed Season 14 of Red vs Blue. There was a clip shown that was written by the Funhaus crew, however, they haven’t released the video on Youtube just yet.
Finally, 343 and Loot Crate also shared some new details on the first Halo Legendary Crate called “Spartan-IV-Initiation. Each crate is shipped every two months. The first crate will ship out in August. Also, each crate will feature an exclusive figuring. (shown above)
Halo Legendary Crate Subscribers who also link their Microsoft account to their Loot Crate account will become a member of Fireteam Apollo, which is a new superfan program where subscriber will actually be recognized in Halo lore. They will also receive an in-game emblem, exclusive REQ packs and access to new stories.