“Halo 5” Design Director Defends Microtransactions

"It just wouldn't feel like Halo."

By Bryan Smith on October 12, 2015 at 7:35pm

Speaking with GameSpot, design director Kevin Franklin went to defend the addition of microtransactions in "Halo 5: Guardians."

The REQ system, or Requisition system, sparked debate as it offered microtransactions for the Warzone multiplayer. Here's what Franklin had to say about the microtransaction:

There's no crazy special items that are only going to be reserved for people who spend a lot more money. Also, you get a lot of rewards whether you're playing Arena or Warzone, so you're always going to have a ton of stuff that you'll be able to use. The biggest thing for us the moment we started even talking about this system was that the game has to be balanced. At the end of the day, it's a multiplayer game. It's not a spend-more-to-win game. We wanted to make sure that if you spend a whole ton of money, and you thought you could get five Scorpions just because you spent more money, it's not going to work. You're still going to have to earn the right to call these Scorpions into the battlefield.

We have a mid-session progression loop, which any MOBA player will be familiar with. You have to level your character up in-game, every game, by killing enemies, going after A.I., and contributing to your team. Then you'll unlock the ability to use these cards. So if you have 10 Scorpions, you can't just call in 10 Scorpions. You actually have an energy system, and that leveling system that will gate you and keep the end-game balanced. And that was really huge--we're multiplayer designers, we can't just make a really unbalanced game. It just wouldn't feel Halo. Kevin Franklin

"Halo 5: Guardians" is set to release on October 27 for Xbox One. We've also learned that the game's storage size requires up to 60 GB of space.

Halo 5: Guardians

Release: 10/27/2015 [NA]

Publisher: Microsoft Studios

Platforms: Xbox One

Purchase: Amazon