Frank O'Connor, the franchise development director over at 343 Industries, recently shared his disdain for leaks within the video game industry, explaining why virtually no good can come from it.
"Breaking embargos is not prophesy," he explained in a post on NeoGAF. "Nor does it require any particular skill or insight. Ultimately he is taking or being given information and leaking it, illegally and often erroneously. And he isn't doing it for some noble or worthy reason. He's doing it for attention."
Earlier this year, a number of details regarding Halo 5 and the alleged Halo 2 Anniversary were leaked, along with what we can only assume is a large portion of Microsoft's E3 plans. O'Connor went on to highlight the fact that a lot of work goes into these projects and their accompanying announcements, and leaks undermine all that hard work.
"People, including nice people with kids and families and stuff, work super hard on this stuff and wake up in the morning to find some of their effort blown up. It's not fun, and for what? So you can have a mildly interesting surprise 8 hours early and lacking context? Or get hyped or disappointed disproportionately? Or get someone fired or someone innocent yelled at?" he added.
In addition, O'Connor shared a few bits of information regarding the recently revealed Xbox One title Halo 5: Guardians, confirming that while the protagonist may not be a female character, the game will feature plenty of strong women. "There will be plenty of strong female characters in the game, but that is not a picture of one of them," he said in regard to the game's cover art.
The game will also run on a completely new engine; however, bits of the core code will transfer over to maintain that true Halo experience. "The things at the core are vital, but a tiny fraction of the overall engine footprint. It’s a new engine. Not an iteration or a rendering evolution," O'Connor explained in a separate post.
Expect to hear loads more about the future of Halo when Microsoft takes the stage at E3 in just a couple weeks.