Is Halo 5's new Forge Mode worth your time?
Halo 5's map editor has more possibilities, and a more accessible design, than any other iteration in the series.
There's not much you can't control in Halo 5: Guardians' Forge mode. The newest iteration of the multiplayer map editor has more creation tools on every level, from structural parts to environmental tiles, dynamic lighting to weather effects. You can even change the wind direction.
"We really want to give you as many options as possible, and we want to make the process faster and more fluid," design director Tom French said during a recent demo. "Halo's shooting controls were always great, but Forge sometimes felt clunky."
So the challenge is twofold: give players more options, but make them easier to use. Considering Forge's complexity, this is easier said than done.
In Halo 4, French said there were a few hundred Forge objects. In Halo 5, it's shipping with about 1,700. And players don't just build maps. They can change how levels function on a minute level. This means designing buildings, sifting through extensive menus and making the slightest alterations to spawn points or weapon locations.
The new Forge has numerous visual cues to increase accessibility.
To demonstrate the changes, French selected a massive arctic terrain set called Glacier during the demo. This is one of four available at launch, the others being the American Pacific Northwest-inspired Alpine, the cyberpunk tiles of Breakout, and the outer-space vacuum of Parallax.
These landscapes are big enough to house three or four individual maps within them, French said, but Forge imposes certain limits in the interest of maintaining good performance during multiplayer matches. So in order to narrow focus, he chose a smaller portion of the larger Glacier tileset on which to break ground.
In about 40 minutes, he had created a small map, and shown us how many small touches make Forge more accessible: objects magnetize to each other at crucial junctions. An invisible grid allows for adjustments over a matter of inches. Objects can be formed into groups, and transported in bulk. French designed this base in about half the time it would have taken to construct in Halo 4.
French also dove into Forge's scripting options. These allow for more nuanced item functionality, such as doors opening and closing, or switches activating a distant object. Scripting leads to fan-created modes such as Griffball -- where Spartans play soccer with giant Gravity Hammers -- or Breakout, where players must help their teammates escape from jail cells before fighting.
One of four available terrain sets.