Halo Infinite Preview

Background: The Halo series returns to Master Chief’s story after six years (Halo 5, 2015). From the Halo Infinite website:

Campaign: When all hope is lost and humanity’s fate hangs in the balance, the Master Chief is ready to confront the most ruthless foe he’s ever faced. Begin anew and step inside the armor of humanity’s greatest hero to experience an epic adventure and finally explore the scale of the Halo ring itself.

Multiplayer: Halo’s celebrated multiplayer returns! More information coming later this year (it was revealed at E3 this June that Halo’s multiplayer suite will be separate, and will be free to play).

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Forge: Halo’s epic content creation tool is back and more powerful than ever. More information coming later this year.

Cross-Generation Gaming: Halo Infinite provides an amazing experience across the Xbox One and newer family of consoles as well as PC. And, on Xbox Series X as well as supported PCs, enjoy enhanced features like up to 4k resolution at 60FPS in campaign and greatly reduced load times creating seamless gameplay that usher in the next generation of gaming. (4K Ultra HD on Xbox One X, Xbox Series X, and compatible PCs only; compatible TV required.)

DavPoint: This is the 11th Halo game that developer 343 Industries has worked on. Microsoft created the studio to take over the Halo series after Bungie, its creators, announced their split from Microsoft in 2007.*

My Experience: Halo Infinite is scheduled to release this holiday season. This past weekend, I was able to participate in the first public “Technical Preview” of Halo Infinite’s multiplayer. This preview included only one game type, “Bot Slayer,” a team deathmatch variant facing four human players against four AI Bots, to test the new AI Bots being added to Halo multiplayer. I’m very proud to report that I “graduated” from playing against easy “Marine” Bots to difficult “ODST” Bots to challenging “Spartan” Bots. My girlfriend remarked that this was the most excited she’s seen me playing video games in a long time! I do have a strong Halo bias. Not only has the Halo series been one of my all time favorites, Halo helped launch my career path in the video game industry way back in 2005!

For those unfamiliar with first person shooters in general and/or Halo in specific, Halo is a special type of FPS, as it’s considered an “arena shooter.” This means that each player starts a match with the same weapons, on a level playing field, and the more powerful weapons and items like sniper rifles, rocket launchers, extra shields, and so on, periodically appear on the map for everyone to fight over. This creates opportunities for different strategies, a lot of tension, and a high skill ceiling. Over the years, a number of different weapons and abilities have come and gone, and in some iterations, some felt Halo “lost its way” by chasing trends and abandoning what made Halo so special.

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With all that said, if this technical preview is anything to go by, Halo Infinite will dominate this fall! From what I’ve seen and heard online, and in the matches I’ve played, the love for Infinite is pretty universal. It seems that developer 343i has carefully crafted a satisfying mix of old and new, and the player speed, weapon damage, shield recharge rates, and TTK (Time To Kill) are all dialed in to near perfection. Gone are divisive additions like jetpacks, double jumps, power dodges, and player loadouts (choosing your starting weapons instead of all sharing the same types), but so are favorites like dual wielding and overpowered sidearms. Granted, this is just one game variant, but these fundamentals should translate well across game modes and maps. I can’t wait to see what else Halo Infinite can do!

To watch me play Halo Infinite, Get to the DavPoint!

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• Developer: 343 Industries
• Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
• Platforms: PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S
• Rating: (Pending. Likely M for Mature for Blood and Gore, and Violence)
• Release Date: Holiday 2021

*343 Industries (343i) have collaborated with studios like Saber Interactive for remasters (Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, 2011), Certain Affinity for map packs (Halo Reach, 2010), Vanguard Games for isometric spin-offs (Halo: Spartan Assault, 2013, and Halo: Spartan Strike, 2015), Behavior Interactive and Creative Assembly for RTS games (Halo Wars, 2016, and Halo Wars 2, 2017) Endeavor One for a VR experience (Halo Recruit, 2017), and with Play Mechanix and Endeavor One on a four player arcade cabinet game (Halo: Fireteam Raven, 2018). Their solo work includes the Halo: Master Chief Collection (2014) and the latest numbered Halo games (Halo 4, 2012, and Halo 5, 2015). Halo Infinite was developed by 343i in collaboration with SkyBox Labs, Sperasoft, The Coalition, and Certain Affinity.