Back in 2011, Microsoft revealed their intention to create a new Halo trilogy, confirming the eventual existence of Halo 4 through Halo 6 in one fell swoop. With Halo 4 serving as the swan song to the Xbox 360, and Halo 5: Guardians exactly a month away, Microsoft and 343 Industries have turned their attention to the sixth entry in the Master Chief’s space saga.
More specifically, Franchise Director Frank O’Connor recently told GamesRadar that his team has plotted out ten years of stories for the series:
“We do kind of know what’s going to happen in the next game pretty well at this point,” explains franchise development director Frank O’Connor. “We’re doing serious real planning and even some writing on the next game already, and that’s a luxury – we’ve never been in that position before. So we both know at a very high level what’s going to happen in, say, ten years from now. But at that very granular level knowing what’s going to happen in the next game and that’s just been a great feeling for me”.
But according to Bonnie Ross, the Studio Head of 343, this type of long-range planning actually began with the Bungie-developed Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach:
343’s studio head Bonnie Ross talks about the long term plan, highlighting Frank and his team’s role back in the ODST and Halo Reach days, “to really lay the fictional foundation for the next twenty years”. There are ideas are in place. Several, in fact. “You can look at the ending of Halo 4 – and where Master Chief is,” she continues, “and obviously we had to know where we were going to take Halo 5 and Halo 6 with that. You have an epic sci-fi universe and we have multiple ways that we can go with this story, but all the pieces are laying there. The canvas is there for us to paint”.
Halo 5: Guardians will be released exclusively for the Xbox One on October 27. Surely, the Halo 6 speculation will begin not too long after that.
