New Halo 5: Guardians trailer shows Spartan Locke in action

It's almost time. You can feel it in the air. That soft tingle in your Twitter feed, as companies start furiously paying for promoted tweets. E3 is coming, and you are going to know about it whether you want to or not. 343 Industries has been ahead of the curve on this, of course. They've been dishing out Halo 5: Guardians advertisements both expected and unusual for weeks now, so the fact that we have a new trailer focused on the man hunting Master Chief should come as no surprise.

Let's just say it's not quite as cryptic as its predecessors. Showing Spartan Locke cleaning up Covenant with a raft of techniques familiar to anyone who played the multiplayer beta, it's all action, no brains.

It's also an advert for Halo 5's incoming pre-order bonuses. Those who purchase early at Gamestop in the US will unlock Locke's armour and helmet for use in the game's multiplayer component.

One more interesting point - there's a moment in the trailer that shows a first-person view from Locke's helmet, as he zooms in on a group of Covenant, seemingly marking or targeting them. The blurb for Locke's helmet also explains that it "enhances situational and threat awareness." Has 343 just sneakily shown us an armour ability of some kind? It's always shaky to draw anything from a CGI trailer, but Halo's traditionally fond of dropping game-related clues into its marketing, so let's not rule anything out.

Joe Skrebels
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.