Prepare to Endlessly Hear About Halo 5 Until October

Have we hit peak Halo 5 yet? No? Well, brace up, because Microsoft seems poised to ensure its upcoming Xbox One headliner’s tsunami will crest before the game’s just-unveiled launch date, October 27.

Consider last night’s double-header bolt from the blue. Shrewdly timed to The Walking Dead‘s fifth-season finale, Microsoft surprised fans of the show (a demographic presumably simpatico with the history and plight of a certain be-helmeted space warrior) with not one but two brand new live action spots.

The hook: developer 343 studios is going all The Dark Knight Rises, pitting the series’ iconic protagonist, Master Chief, against Halo 5‘s new mystery lead, a manhunter named Spartan Locke.

In the first trailer, Locke’s sneering platitudes through that Cylonesque visor, threatening an apparently wounded Master Chief with his sidearm. In the second trailer, the scenery—an apocalyptic vista with a blatant Ozymandias vibe—is unchanged, except it’s Master Chief doing the speechifying, less sardonically, as he strides with pistol in hand toward Locke, who’s now the one lying in the smoldering dust-wracked ruin.

Microsoft seems to be spooling Halo 5 up as Master Chief’s Spider-Man 3 turn—the old good-guy-goes-loopy trope. Or maybe that’s the ruse, because that’s partly how the company’s pitching this: as a mystery designed to keep tongues wagging for the next seven months, replete with teasing Twitter hashtag (#HunttheTruth), an ongoing audio saga designed to deconstruct our understanding of the Chief, and of course the game’s official debut at E3 in a few months.

The chances 343 Studios plans to sully Halo‘s do-gooder protagonist permanently? I say less than zero. But when you’ve exhausted the whole you-versus-the-other trope across half a dozen games over the course of a decade, I suppose the inward introspective turn is inevitable—though the whole “Whoops, reevaluate what you thought you knew!” creative approach feels less like bold storytelling than another contrivance to extend the life of a corporate mascot through another gazillion prettified shooting galleries.

Is this 343 Industries cheating its way to something approximating meaningful character development by way of ret-conning Master Chief’s dossier (like the comic book industry, when it needs to gin up superhero sales)?

Or will it be more like that Star Trek episode where Spock sports a Van Dyke and Kirk’s an assassin, the status quo’s upended, and everything’s back to normal after a sufficient amount of emotional bloodletting?

One thing’s for sure: Microsoft wants you to talk about it for the next six months.