Over the past few months, 343's role in Halo: The Master Chief Collection has gradually shifted from curator to creator, putting weapons and vehicle skills into Bungie's original trilogy. Next week, the studio will go a step further, adding new armor to Halo 3 for the first time in over a decade.

MCC Season 5, which will be available as a free update on January 27, will feature an all-new unlock pass that will unlock up to 80 new armor cosmetics for Halo 3 and Reach, as well as skins across the entire collection.

The tweet above gives a brief introduction, but you can see the new permutations in their entirety on the Halo wiki. According to that post, many of these were created for Halo: Online, a free-to-play reimagining of Halo 3's multiplayer for the PC, which had a limited release in Russia but was quickly cracked open to create the first PC port of Halo 3 reportedly.

Visually, the game appears to be a bridge between the design sensibilities of "Halo 3" and "Halo 4". Nevertheless, pure players can disable the new cosmetics with the "New Skins" toggle, and players wearing them will appear as standard Master Chief stand-ins. This also applies to skin-tight "tech suits" under armor.

Reach, on the other hand, adds two new helmets, six new chest armors, and a significant addition of robotic hands that were previously absent; unlike in Halo 3, these new cosmetics will continue to be used no matter what. Yes, even the "Mr. Chief" faceplate.