Halo 6 Will Focus On Master Chief

343 Industries made a mistake, and its developers know it.

Halo 5: Guardians, the latest entry in Microsoft's flagship franchise, split its time between two protagonists: the series' regular star, Master Chief, and a newcomer named Jameson Locke. Fans were not pleased. In an interview with gaming magazine GamesTM (and posted online by Wccftech), Halo franchise director Frank O'Connor says that the studio has learned its lesson, and that Master Chief will be Halo's number one hero going forward.

"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," O'Connor says. "For some fans and certainly fans of Master Chief, it was a huge disappointment because they wanted more Chief."

In essence, O'Connor says, the Halo 5 team looked at Master Chief as a blank slate (after all, players never see his face, just his genre-defining power armor), calling the character "a vessel for your adventure" and not a fully fleshed-out personality. However, O'Connor notes, over the past 15 years worth of Halo games, players started to "fill in the gaps" themselves, forging a strong emotional bond with the character. "Doubling down on Master Chief's story and the amount of focus on him was probably the easiest learning from Halo 5," O'Connor says. "That was a really simple thing to absorb and embrace."

For Halo 6, Microsoft and 343 will focus less on new characters, and will instead devote that energy to "making the world a little bit more realistic and compelling." In short, if you want to play as Master Chief, don't worry. Next time, you'll be able to.

Halo 5: Guardians launched in October, 2017 and, despite complaints regarding its story and main campaign, earned positive reviews. The next main entry in the series, referred to online as Halo 6, hasn't been officially announced, but O'Connor's statements imply that work is well underway. A real-time strategy spin-off, Halo Wars 2, debuted last February.