A fan (Andrew) of the site sent me this question:
“Im a really big elite fan and I have been wondering will the elites be
playable in customs and forge. P.S the reason I ask this is because I’m
second in command of a really good {elite clan}”

My answer is not official, however I’ve gleaned some of the info from official sources, those being podcast, magazine articles, tweets and so on so take it with a grain of salt…

As best as I can tell from the source, Elites will not be playable in any form.

Now my educated guess to this is that 343 wants people to focus on Spartans. Likewise since the Covenant will not be the largest threat/enemy, Elites have taken a lesser role in Halo.

From a programming point of view, it’s also easier to not have to develop a larger sized playable character and skin it. Yes, 343 could have used the elites from Reach and reprogrammed/reskinned them. However again, it really looks like they want the focus of multiplayer (be that competitive or custom) to be that of Spartans.

While I rarely played as an Elite myself, I totally understand your position. Elites have been a huge part of Halo from the beginning and as playable characters in Halo 3 and Reach they’ve grown on fans that much more.

It will be sad to see that not an option any more. Though I do have hopes that 343 will have enough other features in the game to keep Elite fans coming back, even if it means the end of playing them (Elites) in Halo.

Thanks for the question, Andrew.

If you have a burning question regarding Halo, please feel free to ask me and I’ll answer it as best as possible. You can send the question to [email protected] or register and post it in the forums.

-HFFL