Halo 5's Free DLC Details Revealed

Microsoft and 343 Industries have been working assiduously post-launch of Halo 5 to win over as much favor as possible from the gaming community; they hope to convince gamers to give the latest first-person shooter a try, or at least return to the series that helped put the Xbox brand on the map. The plan for doing so is with a continuous flow of free DLC, with the latest bit of that DLC arriving this April.

Gamespot described some of the content that gamers will be able to get their hands on with the new update, which will bring additional balance tweaks and upgrades to the playability of the game, along with some brand new weapons, maps, skins, vehicles, and UI tweaks.

Part of an incomplete slide shows some of the items coming, but they describe the recently revealed content in great depth over on their official website, where they breakdown the new content for Halo 5: Guardians, such as the new Hannibal Mantis. Not only will this Mantis have a new look with a more industrialized livery topped off with splashes of symmetrically painted on powder blue designs, but it also features some brand new weapons. For instance, they replaced the chaingun with a Gauss repeater. They also added in a multi-rocket missile launcher and topped it off with a boost in the Hannibal Mantis' shields at the cost of lower armor.

The Mantis is accompanied by a Hannibal Scorpion. The prototype tank has the same desert-and-mud color contrast with that extra dash of powder blue across the front end and the turret at the top of the tank. Unlike the other tanks in Halo 5, the Hannibal Scorpion comes with a heavy-mounted Spartan laser and accompanied by a gunner's turret that uses a Gauss repeater instead of the typical chaingun. The whole Gauss weapon loadout seems to be a theme with the Hannibal vehicles, eh?

Joining the vehicular armament are new helmets and armor for the Spartans. There's a new set called Dynast, which has a sort of beetle-style design to the helmet and a heavy-armor chest plate that almost feels like a throwback to the old Mark IV armor, just smoother and with a more ergonomic style.

In addition to the new armor and vehicles, they also introduce Tartarus' Gavel that the Brute Chieftan used during the confrontation with the Arbiter in the final mission of Halo 2. It wasn't the most amazing boss fight since it was really tough to see what was going on, but one of the things that absolutely did stand out was the epic hammer that Tartarus wielded like an absolute champ.

Ahead of the April update, 343 Industries actually released six new maps for Halo 5. They're actually community-made maps designed in Forge, but they decided to tweak the community maps just a bit by adding in more “fictional” world-building content and refinement so that it feels like each map belongs right there alongside 343's very best.

And speaking of the Forge, the Gamespot article notes that the Forge in Halo 5 will be receiving some much-needed love, but they don't go into detail on what sort of plans 343 has for the Forge. The updates could be as simple as some tool fixes and control refinement or something as big as new parts and objects to utilize in the map making process.

All of April's content hasn't been revealed for Halo 5 yet, but they plan on doing so soon as the massive update preps for launch.