Every Halo shooter (save for the first and Reach) has had a number attached to it, and the next original game in the series, Halo 5: Guardians, will be no different. 343 Industries boss Bonnie Ross hopes that isn't always the case, though, telling OXM that she would have even preferred that Halo 4 hadn't carried a number.

"At some point, we do want to stop numbering. Especially on Xbox One," Ross said in the latest issue of OXM (via Gamer Headlines). "If I had my druthers, we wouldn't have called Halo 4 that--we really look at that game as the start of where [Master Chief]'s going. At some point we need to drop the number and still [let you] know you've got a big story coming."

Dropping the number for future games won't necessarily be indicative of Master Chief's presence (or absence) in them. In the case of a Halo game that carries a subtitle but no number, Ross said, "It might still be a Master Chief story. I'm just saying, at some point we don't want to be Halo 17, when Master Chief's like 80. We're not Final Fantasy, we can't do it. So we kind of open that door--it doesn't mean it'll be a Master Chief story or not. That's something for us to decide in the future."

There have been three Halo games released sans number--Reach, Halo Wars, and Halo: Spartan Assault--but Reach is the only Halo shooter to have done so (and it was a spinoff, much like ODST).

Master Chief will be playable in Halo 5, though he may not be the game's "primary character." That distinction could instead go to Agent Locke, whom we'll be getting acquainted with in the Halo: Nightfall series that Halo: The Master Chief Collection buyers will get access to later this year.

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