Halo: The Master Chief Collection Season 5 now live with new armors

As we covered earlier this week, Halo: The Master Chief Collection is still receiving regular improvements, with Season 5 beginning today. The new season is titled “Anvil,” and it introduces new armor, skins for weapons and vehicles, new character nameplates, and seasonal challenges. Aside from the new content, 343 Industries added an important visual feature and some bug fixes.

This update is really all about the content, so that’s where we will start. Longtime Halo fans should remember some leaked images of an incomplete helmet that never made it into Halo: Reach. Bungie called it the GRD helmet, and it’s in the image above.

Needless to say, a lot of players have enthusiastically requested it over the years despite the odds of its completion seeming slim to none. 343 shattered expectations though, when it announced the commitment to develop cosmetics and new character model options for the various Halo games in The Master Chief Collection. Season 5 finally brings the completed model of the GRD helmet into the game.

There’s more where that came from though, and people are sure to love the other new helmet coming to Halo: Reach. Old school fans might recall the good ‘ole days of Halo 2 production hype. Bungie was the talk of the town in the gaming world, and it had a lot of fun in the spotlight. The community manager at the time was Frank O’Connor, and he crafted a generally hilarious take on the Master Chief. The drawing went on to be known as Mister Chief, and has since been a meme for the Halo franchise that many fans adore. Well, Mister Chief’s day has finally come. His goofy face will appear as a variant for the MARINER helmet type.

Finishing the Collection

Halo Online armors are also coming to Halo 3. Players may be less familiar with this project, but it was essentially a Halo 3 PC game for Russia that was cancelled back in 2015. It was kind of a weird development, but it resulted in some custom assets that 343 decided to introduce into Halo 3. These armors generally match the aesthetics of Halo 2 Anniversary’s multiplayer armor and 343’s approach to the Halo art style. Fans frankly love it or hate it, which made this update somewhat controversial.

Fortunately, the developers quickly came up with a solution. That important visual feature we mentioned is a toggle option that lets you turn off all of the new Season 5 content in case you prefer a classic Halo 3 experience. The same goes for the Halo: Reach helmets, so you can enjoy Halo however you choose. And in case you are wondering, turning this toggle feature on will turn players with new cosmetics into default skins on your screen.

Continuous customization

Aside from the armors, there are some cool weapons and vehicle skins coming to Halo 3. No word on those for Halo: Reach yet, but it seems inevitable at this point. In the meantime, you can focus on getting some timed exclusives such as the Black History Month and Women’s History Month nameplates in addition to a golden Mongoose skin. Golden vehicles in Halo is another story altogether, but we’re not taking a Halo history class today.

Some of this content requires you to complete specific challenges to unlock it, while other pieces just require some grinding to get. All in all, you can expect 100 new tiers of content to unlock in the Anvil season.

Enough content and challenges for you?

343 didn’t go into any specific details on what the bug fixes entail. We did some digging though and found that Steam users can expect a 258 MB update. Microsoft Store and Game Pass players will need to sit through about 6.3 GBs for whatever reason.

So there you have it. Technically, most of these armors are more like restorations than actual new additions. The weapons and vehicles skins are sure to please as well. Don’t forget to knock out those limited time Season 5 challenges as you play Halo: The Master Chief Collection if particular items appeal to you. Don’t worry though, most of the content will remain available to unlock in the future. This is the case with most content from previous seasons as well. You can read the full post on Halo Waypoint for more information.