Halo Infinite seems to be on track for a holiday 2021 release window this time around. After opening a technical beta test in July, today, 343 Industries dropped the August development update video to share its progress on the long-awaited project. Unfortunately, there’s good news and bad news. We’ll go with bad first: head of creative Joseph Staten confirmed that Halo Infinite will not launch with Co-Op Campaign and Forge map editor mode.
Instead, the team is aiming to release the co-op mode in the Season 2 update of Halo Infinite while Forge follows a bit later in Season 3. They are aiming to ship new seasons every three months. So if Halo Infinite launches somewhere around November or December 2021, then you and your friends can start playing the co-op campaign in March and making new maps in Forge in July. If the plan stays on track that is.
“[…] Some of the things we won’t be able to do for launch, but […] that’s part of being a [game as a service]. […] Some things won’t landed on launch timeframe, but some things we’re just rolling out over time. As a part of this Halo Infinite journey that we’re kicking off with fans.”
“[…] Unfortunately, as we focused the team for shut down, and really focused on a quality experience for launch, we made the really tough decision to delay shipping campaign co-op for launch. And we also made the tough call to delay shipping Forge past launch as well.”
The ex-Bungie higher up who was appointed as the campaign lead in August last year added that the reason for Halo Infinite co-op Campaign and Forge delay is due to the intricacies in the back-end side of things. They wanted to do a console parity — making sure that the gameplay experience stays the same on either Xbox One, Series X, or PC.
On the co-op side, we have the opportunity to play the campaign all the time, it’s this wonderful, open, non-linear take on the Halo campaign. It’s going to offer so much more flexibility to take down Banished bases from all different angles, to progress through the game in your own way. […] At the same time though, that’s complicated. When you think about save systems and all the technology that needs to drive this more non-linear experience, and in the co-op experience that’s even more complicated. And that’s another reason why it takes longer, just to make sure the quality, day one, and people can jump in and play and have fun.”
Thankfully, like the seasonal update additions, it’s not all doom and gloom. There is still a handful of good news that I haven’t write about here:
- The player feedback from the July beta test/flighting helped give the game up to 20% performance boosts on both PC (especially for GTX 900 series GPU) and consoles.
- A year-long road map for future updates and content is already planned. Let’s hope there won’t be any delays.
- Multiplayer split-screen functionality will launch on day one — for the Xbox family of consoles only. For PC, the team is excited about “exploring” the feature post-launch, but it’s not clear whether they’re going to add it or not. Fingers crossed.
- Although the proper release date for Halo Infinite hasn’t been set, community manager Brian Jarrard says the team is almost ready to confirm one. I assume it’s going to be near the end of November. Place your bets, people.
- Like Halo: MCC, 343 Industries will run more pre and post-launch beta tests for each season. Better start registering yourself to the Halo Insider program for a chance of trying them out if you haven’t.
For more details, watch the 28-minutes long development update video below.
Even though 343 Industries have received backlash regarding the sprint and color coating system, the team seems confident that launching Halo Infinite without the series-defining features to chase that winter holiday sales number is worth the risk.
Regarding controversies, a bunch of data miners has also managed to unearth juicy stuff about the game from the beta test, detailing the broad outline of the plot and some new features. Including a voice announcement for a Battle Royale mode (although some assume it could be a variation of a Big Team Battle instead of something like PUBG or COD: Warzone).
What do you think of this news? Are you disappointed that you can’t play with the campaign with your friends from day one? On the bright side, since the PVP mode is free-to-play, you can just wait for a discount when you want to play through the co-op campaign or Forge later with friends.
