I'm aware, but I'll believe it when I see it. 343i thought that that staple of Halo was worth jettisoning, to enable a game mode where people can buy shit with real money. Between that and MCC, my trust will be hard to earn back.
Any fan of classic Halo games could have predicted that removing splitscreen would be somewhat controversial. They knew exactly what can of worms they were opening when they prioritized 'framerate' (read: Warzone, read: REQ packs) over splitscreen, and they went ahead with it anyway. I'm not calling it 0%, because while Bonnie Ross and her team may claim they learned an important lesson about the value of splitscreen among Halo's audience... I don't believe for a second that they didn't already understand that shit was important before they pulled the trigger on Halo 5. And so they might find or may have found some new 'gameplay opportunity' that precludes splitscreen. Call me paranoid, but I won't believe that shit until I see it.
If you'd have asked me before Halo 5 came out, I'd have told you - confidently - that there was a 0% chance that Halo would ever ship without splitscreen or LAN support. It'd be as unbelievable to me as a singleplayer-only Tribes game... and yet here we are. The fifth entry in the Halo series, the quintessential couch co-op and LAN party franchise, shipped without splitscreen and LAN support. For a long time, that said all I needed to know about 343i's handling of the Halo series. It said to me, loud and clear, "these guys don't get it".
(I finally gave Halo 5 a shot late last year. It's my favorite console shooter of this generation, now. It's really great. It's the only game that I play every single day, across all platforms. 343i can make a fucking good ass multiplayer game. The lack of splitscreen, however, still limits my opportunities to play this game with friends, which in turn limits my desire to play it more than a match or two daily.)
