Still No Splitscreen In Halo 5

The start of this week saw the launch of the rather brilliant Halo 5. The guys at 343i pushed the gameplay and narrative forward in a new direction whilst still feeling like Halo. However among the wonderful new weapons, worlds and characters there was something missing, something very Halo...

Splitscreen. Halo 5 launched without any splitscreen functionality what so ever, no local verses or co-op. Playing both co-op and multiplayer with friends easily made the Halo Series the go to series on Xbox, 360 and X1. Times have changed with online multiplayer being the default means of gaming but splitscreen is still an demanded feature, in fact there are multiple petitions (the largest being 9,000 strong), complaints and general forum rage to bring the feature back.

Even Nathan Fillion's pleasing tones did not ease fans' tension

Now split screen (as well as some crafty resolution cutting) was sacrificed in order to keep the game at a steady 60fps during the effects heavy combat. The sacrifices was not made in vain, as the game dose look and play fantastically. However fans have been hoping that the feature would be added down the line. hoping that they could cut the FPS down to 30 in local only co-op and verses.

Today that hope took a punch to the face. Speaking to GamesRadar+ today Franchise Director Frank O'Conner

"Realistically, for Halo 5, it's not something we can just throw in a patch, It's just not feasible with the way the engine works."

But there is hope for the next entry as O'Conner admits that the uproar on this was "huge" and pledged his support for spiltscreen... kinda.

"Splitscreen is fun for me too. It's not something that I object to, and we would've loved to put it in, We'll talk about it for the next game, and we'll talk about it for the future."

Abe's Take
The lack of splitscreen did hurt my experience of the title. Playing Halo with my brother and friends are permanently engraved in my memory. So much so that as I was installing Halo 5 and knowing full well it didn't have splitscreen, I wrote out a text to my brother telling him to "get round for more Halo" and it wasn't until I was about to hit send did I realize what I was doing.

But its not all doom and gloom for couch warriors as smaller titles like Toy Soldiers: War Chest still support splitscreen. Hell Borderlands: Handsome Collection actually increased the local co-op count from two to four.