Unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ve heard that the next installment of the Halo story was announced via a teaser trailer at E3. Information that’s come out since includes Microsoft first publicly saying that the trailer was not for “Halo 5” and later explaining that their plans for future Halo games have expanded from the before mentioned “Halo Trilogy” to include other aspects of the story in games.
Microsoft Studios corporate VP Phil Spencer said, in an interview with GameSpot, “While we originally said trilogy, we’ve actually expanded this to more of a saga, so we don’t want to limit the Reclaimer story within a trilogy”.
Halo 3: ODST and Halo:REACH were considered side-stories to the first three games in what has been called the “Covenant Trilogy”. With Microsoft being careful to announce that the recent trailer for the newest Halo wasn’t “Halo 5”, it seems quite possible that the game announced at E3 might be a side-story.
One can hope that they wouldn’t tease us with Master Chief for a game that he’s not actually in, and that at the least we’ll play as Master Chief in the campaign, and that the game is indeed one that brings back the much loved Cortana, of whom many feel comprises at least half of what makes the game “Halo”.
Only time will tell, and while fans scour clues for details and canon-addicts fill in the backstory, we won’t know for sure what Microsoft and 343 has up their sleeves until next year.