Leaked Halo 5: Guardians screenshots are suspicious and exciting

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Joe first fell in love with games when a copy of The Lion King on SNES became his stepfather in 1994. When the cartridge left his mother in 2001, he turned to his priest - a limited edition crystal Xbox - for guidance. And now he's here.

Let's put this one on the "hmm" pile. It's a set of six pictures of what purports to be post-beta Halo 5 multiplayer, with returning weapons from Halo 4 (could be Photoshopped), posted by someone claiming to be a game tester (dangerous) on NeoGAF (nest of rumours and mistruths). All of that said, let's talk about them!

It would appear 343 is holding onto its contribution to the Halo-verse, with the likes of the Promethean Incineration Cannon and Boltshot reappearing in multiplayer. The leaker claims that they've been altered slightly, however - the former is now battery-based rather than ammo-based and uses a charge shot; the latter can't be used as a mini-shotgun any longer, instead firing two homing shots.

The screens come alongside some more general feedback. Chief among them is that the "Spartan Bro" celebrations at the end of multiplayer matches, where power armoured buffoons high five each other, have been dialled back to make them a little more serious. Here's the full list of observations:

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Incineration Cannon is back and has changed compared to Halo 4. players can charge up a shot and the longer you charge, the more powerful it is. Battery based rather than ammo based.
Railgun is back from Halo 4 and works almost identically - could hold up to 11 shots
Overshield was present had some weird screen effect when you picked it up - looked like a bug
Boltshot is back but doesn't work like halo 4 - no shotgun fire mode. fires two shots at once and sort of tracks players
Suppressor is back and fires a lot slower
Blue outline on weapons was in the build
Killcams were disabled in the build, could spectate players while you were dead
BR spread was near-gone - fired so fast
Spartan chatter was reduced hugely, less pointless callouts
Spartan bro moments cut down. game ending segment is just your spartans walking towards the screen, no more highfives and shit
Killfeed modified to be like this: "PLAYER NAME" "WEAPON KILLED WITH" "PLAYER NAME"
Pistol RoF is modified to be slower but is a lot more powerful - competes with AR and BR
Ground pound is harder to use, radius is tiny
Overshield was bugged, my shields said i constantly had it even after death

We'll certainly be seeing more of Halo 5 at E3 2015, but the focus seems very much to be on a campaign reveal right now - whether this stuff will be proven is quite another matter.