Halo Infinite is probably going to be the largest Halo designed to date. A developer reveal today dropped a bunch of hints about the features planned for Master Chief’s return to Covenant space. Some of the team leads working of 343 Industries working on Halo Infinite answered a lot of questions from the audience about what sort of features one can expect in the completed game. Needless to say, Halo Infinite has a number of features that might blow any gamer’s expectations out of the water.
You can find a summary of all the reveals on the Halo subreddit here.
The game’s apparently designed to be a semi-open world by nature – with the Silent Cartographer mission being the prime inspiration behind the design. Multiple approaches to an objective would always exist to diversify the experience. The game also follows a progress system where regions will be unlocked one after another, and access to regions is determined by the number of Marines rescued or what “vehicles you have access to” (which seemed like a really odd add-on). The world will have multiple biomes, starting with the Pacific Northwest. Sub-biomes such as the swampy wetlands, hexagonal caves as well as Forerunner constructs will be there throughout the map for exploration. The map will also have outposts and bases throughout, with the occasional Banished patrols between random locations. While the game’s main story does unlock access to new areas, side objectives within particular areas are not locked by any invisible walls and can be accessed at any time.
The game has a living day/night cycle that affects a lot of stuff throughout the world. The time of the day actually affects the nature of the cutscenes too. Cutscenes are also mentioned to be smooth without any form of loading screen to adding padding in between gameplay. The biggest disappointment that gamers can possibly have is that Halo Infinite does not have dual-wielding and the fact that no character apart from Master Chief is playable (yep, this means no Elites). Also, weapon upgrades aren’t in the game apparently because it “isn’t something that Halo stands for”.
The biggest reveal (possibly) is the fact that the developers actually had noted the disappointment of folks in general on seeing the reveal trailer, and will be working on improving the game to keep it in line with expectations. If all of the leaks are true, then Halo Infinite might indeed be a game to look out for – the true next-gen experience one can possibly want if Xbox One doesn’t hold it back.
Halo Infinite is slated to release this year on Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles, as well as PC via Xbox Game Pass and Steam.