This Wednesday, June 29, Warzone Firefight will launch as the latest update to Halo 5: Guardians. This will be the biggest content addition yet for Halo 5 and includes a brand-new, 8-player cooperative mode where a squad of Spartans must fight through five rounds of increasingly difficult objectives.

Since the beta earlier this year, multiple changes have been done to the mode to increase the balance and fun. "Defend the Garage" objective on Escape from A.R.C. has been simplified. Instead of killing a predetermined set of enemies without them capturing the location you just need to kill them before time runs out. The HUD and UI have also been updated to inform the player about their rate of success.

The respawn timer has been increased by 5 seconds for all players after completing each round. This means Round 5 deaths will be much longer than the beginning and pushes cooperation.

The round number and round objective will now appear at the beginning informing each player where they are at in the overall game mode and what to do. The scoreboard in the bottom right not only shows your score but also the team's progression towards the goal.

Round-to-round scoreboard has been added so that inbetween and during reach round you can view some of the highlights. There is also score feeding where if you kill an enemy while the score from a previous enemy is still on screen it will feed it. As you continue to rack up kills with the score on screen it will increase and change color, with multiple levels of display.

A new objective type, "Protect Object(s)" is on every map. This mode sees the team defending a specific object from enemy attacks, such as a UNSC generator from Knights, or a bunch of Forerunner artifacts from Hunters.

The six maps that will feature Warzone Firefight include:

  • Escape from A.R.C.
  • March on Stormbreak
  • Raid on Apex 7
  • Skirmish at Darkstar
  • Urban
  • Attack on Sanctum (NEW)

Warzone Firefight also changes the way Warzone rewards with XP and RP are given. In Firefight players are rewarded for the amount of rounds completed and a speed bonus is applied only if you complete all the rounds under par times.

Attack on Sanctum is another new map being added for Warzone, this time set in the homeworld of the Sangheili race, Sanghelios. One side is an open and dry desert with swirling shapes, and on the other holds cliffs, waterfulls, and lush greenery. In the middle is a temple  visible from both sides featuring two Sangheli statues. A Promethean and Covenant boss are fighting as you are dropped in the map. The fastest side will be able to earn points for both, or the AI might have the final kill and steal the points from both sides. A new covenant boss character is the Grunt Goblin (Grunt in a mech suit), and we also get a new UNSC aerial vehicle: the AV-49 Wasp.

Molten is the newest Arena map addition, made for Team Slayer and Strongholds. It's a smelting plant within an active volcano, and is the first to incorporate lava that the player can interact with.

Another new addition is the Halo 2 Beam Rifle. This version features a faster rate of fire and increased hip accuracy. The Delta variant causes damage and pulls the target towards a singularity before exploding. Essentially a one-hit kill weapon, you have to be accurate as the fire rate is slow.

All of this will be available for free to players of Halo 5: Guardians on Wednesday, June 29, 2016. You can check out some new images for the update in the gallery below as well.