For the focusing energy critical wave equation in 5D, we construct a solution showing the inelastic nature of the collision of two solitons for any choice of sign, speed, scaling and translation parameters, except the special case of two solitons of same scaling and opposite signs. Beyond its own interest as one of the first rigorous studies of the collision of solitons for a non-integrable model, the case of the quartic gKdV equation being partially treated in [32,33,34], this result can be seen as part of a wider program aiming at establishing the soliton resolution conjecture for the critical wave equation. This conjecture has already been established in the 3D radial case in [10] and in the general case in 3, 4 and 5D along a sequence of times in [13].Compared with the construction of an asymptotic two-soliton in [35], the study of the nature of the collision requires a more refined approximate solution of the two-soliton problem and a precise determination of its space asymptotics. To prove inelasticity, these asymptotics are combined with the method of channels of energy from [10,23].