Earlier today, Halo 5: Guardians was announced as the next mainline title in Microsoft’s flagship FPS series. However, noted NeoGAF tipster Crazy Buttocks on a Train gave fans a cryptic hint at the announcement several hours earlier when he posted the following image in a thread on the forum discussing the Halo series.
The image is one of the first pieces of concept art released to promote Marvel Studio’s upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy. Whilst now it’s very obvious that this was a nod towards the game’s subtitle, there were a host of speculative theories ahead of official word from the studio this morning. Everything from six-player co-operative play to the suggestion that Microsoft was beginning work on some sort of crossover akin to Marvel’s Cinematic Universe was being taken as the intent of CBOAT’s mysterious image.
CBOAT first rose to internet notoriety when he began dropping leaked information as to Microsoft’s plans for the Xbox One in a seemingly innocuous forum thread. This information was later collected in a separate thread. Several of the claims that CBOAT made have now either been confirmed or are generally accepted as being correct—perhaps the most well-known being that a sequel to Forza Horizon and Halo 2: Anniversary are expected to be the backbone of Microsoft’s Holiday 2014 output.
It’s still unknown just what relationship CBOAT has to Microsoft and how he is getting his information, as well as how much of his leaks will turn out to be based in truth. Whether he’s a disgruntled employee, random troll, or even a bizarre publicity stunt on the part of the company themselves, this latest leak seems to suggest that he is somehow in the loop.