It has been almost 9 years and there is still no Halo 5 PC port?!?

[Haklen]

The Master Chief Collection is already magically held together by duct tape and popsicle sticks so adding Halo 5 on top of it would likely be disastrous.

As for a standalone release, not only would it cannibalize Infinite's already dwindling player base, they'd have to figure out how to handle the microtransaction economy, something that was key to Halo 5's multiplayer suite. If they were to strip it out entirely, they would need to redesign whole portions of the game. If they left it in, the optics of a port of a nine year old game launching with a microtransaction store would be pretty nasty, especially when it's running concurrently with Infinite's money-grubbing live service.

Basically, too much red tape and headaches involved at this point. 343 certainly doesn't have the manpower to do it in-house either.

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How bad IS the MCC? I hear stuff about graphical issues and stuff everytime and I have yet to really understand how actually bad it is for real.

 

[JigglesBunny]

How bad IS the MCC? I hear stuff about graphical issues and stuff everytime and I have yet to really understand how actually bad it is for real.

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At launch, it was literally unplayable. It took them years to fix it, at which point they added Halo 3: ODST and Reach as sort of "make goods" while also porting the collection to PC. The PC version and the port of Reach all came with their own problems that were slowly but eventually fixed. Things ranging from botched sound effects to broken hit detection, that kinda thing.

These days, MCC's problems are thankfully far more mundane. The PC version still doesn't officially support HDR, instead relying on Windows Auto HDR. The PC version is also housing its fair share of hackers because the game is using an outdated Easy Anti-Cheat model and this unfortunately affects the console versions too. That said, they're mostly abundant in higher levels of Ranked playlists, so you could definitely get lucky and avoid them for the most part in social playlists and lower level Ranked play. There are also performance issues with Halo 2: Anniversary's campaign on both Series consoles and PC as well as a handful of issues with each of the games that are likely never going to be fixed now that 343's slowly moving away from Infinite and the MCC altogether. Stuff like sporadic but troublesome networking problems in Halo 4, Halo 2: Anniversary's multiplayer still appearing visually darkened for some reason, CE's networking model breaking down in matches with more than 6 players, etc.

To be clear, the collection today is very playable and largely satisfactory (especially on consoles) but adding another fork of the engine and Halo 5 is essentially like throwing a couple of lit matches on a house that the firefighters just finished putting out. It'd inevitably cause a myriad of new issues and 343 just doesn't have the bandwidth to handle that.

 

[Issen]

I know people look down on it, but I would like to play Halo 5 considering I've played all the rest at this point lol (on PC).

Playing Infinite there were moments I was like "should I…know this thing they're referencing?"

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You would have gained zero additional understanding from Halo 5 and would have been infinitely better served by playing Halo Wars 2.

Not that anything noteworthy happens in Halo Infinite, anyway.

 

[Haklen]

At launch, it was literally unplayable. It took them years to fix it, at which point they added Halo 3: ODST and Reach as sort of "make goods" while also porting the collection to PC. The PC version and the port of Reach all came with their own problems that were slowly but eventually fixed. Things ranging from botched sound effects to broken hit detection, that kinda thing.

These days, MCC's problems are thankfully far more mundane. The PC version still doesn't officially support HDR, instead relying on Windows Auto HDR. The PC version is also housing its fair share of hackers because the game is using an outdated Easy Anti-Cheat model and this unfortunately affects the console versions too. That said, they're mostly abundant in higher levels of Ranked playlists, so you could definitely get lucky and avoid them for the most part in social playlists and lower level Ranked play. There are also performance issues with Halo 2: Anniversary's campaign on both Series consoles and PC as well as a handful of issues with each of the games that are likely never going to be fixed now that 343's slowly moving away from Infinite and the MCC altogether. Stuff like sporadic but troublesome networking problems in Halo 4, Halo 2: Anniversary's multiplayer still appearing visually darkened for some reason, CE's networking model breaking down in matches with more than 6 players, etc.

To be clear, the collection today is very playable and largely satisfactory (especially on consoles) but adding another fork of the engine and Halo 5 is essentially like throwing a couple of lit matches on a house that the firefighters just finished putting out. It'd inevitably cause a myriad of new issues and 343 just doesn't have the bandwidth to handle that.

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Thank you for the in-depth response, I actually got the collection just this week after scoring a cheap copy of Halo CE, I knew there were some problems with the graphics, but not THAT extent, I'll probably just play the campaigns once, but I appreciate the insight you have given me!

 

[horkrux]

I think this is simply due to the fact that 343 had been running on fumes just to ship Halo Infinite in a good-enough state. There don't appear to be any studios that could take over for port jobs, same as with Gears.

 

[Mivey]

The PC is clearly their premium platform. It's not like Xbox where they treat people like beta testers. Halo 5 simply didn't make the cut.

 

[TΛPIVVΛ]

This. I noped out of continuing Halo game continuity when I found it was never coming to PC.

 

[Pat]

Well on the MP side, Infinite is basically a better Halo 5.

On the campaign side, haven't seen anyone begging for it. It is on xCloud however.

 

[No Depth]

After doing a series replay befor Infinite came out, Halo 4 easily took the crown as the worst SP entry. Halo 5's is probably second worsw, but my god Halo 4s was even worse than I remembered

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Same for me. I was pretty shocked at how awful Halo 4 held up doing a series revisit a couple years ago.

Meanwhile, Halo 5 gets wayyyyyyyyy too bad of a rep. Maybe I came in with super low expectations, but it is a tremendous upgrade in combat, flow, feel, physics, a true generational leap. I mean jumping from 4->5 is such an absurd upgrade you just feel from the moment you first start moving and firing your gun. Visuals obviously too, but the game feel alone is really pretty awesome. Especially noticeable when using and comparing the forerunner weapons and enemies. They were awful in 4, but such a massive improvement in 5.

Personally I dug not just being Master Chief again for the entire game too. Its story is mostly whatever nonsense, but it was nice to get more perspective playing Blue Team and having those levels that were mostly NPC conversations were a nice surprise and a welcome break. Again coming off Halo 4, which I also found the weakest story too, it was just a decent romp.

 

[TheBaldwin]

I imagine they probably don't want to take anyone away from infinite, whilst also not wanting to add it to MCC incase the destabilises the game again.

It's a shame as I think the multiplayer was great, but yeah seems to be in this weird place