We’re coming up on the two year anniversary of Halo Infinit🐬e, and to be honest, there was a time that I wasn’t sure it would even make it this far. With the significant delays in seasonal content updates, canceled and postponed features, and major layoffs that hit 343 Industries earlier this year, it’s a miracle that Halo Infinite is still around. What’s more impressive is that it seems to be thriving. With the launch of Season 5 this week, 343 has solidified a long-term, sustainable season model that brings meaningful content and highly-requested features to the game at a consistent rate. This is the most impressive season for Infinite yet, and while it’s a shame it took two years to get here, I have to give credit where credit’s due: Halo is so back.
Here’s a quick recap of what’s been going on with Halo Infinite this year if you haven’t been keeping up. Last September’s 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:big dev update revealed that Season 3 was being delayed from November 2022 until March 2023 to give the dev team time to reassess and build out a coﷺntent pipeline in order to ensure the game would have a more consistent future. In its place was a mini-season called the December Update, which turned out to be the game’s most significant yet - bringing network campaign co-op, mission replay, and Forge to Infinite. As expected, Forge has largely been the driving force that kep𒁃t interest in Halo alive over the last year.
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In January, Microsoft reportedly laid off around a qu💮arter of 343 Industries’ staff. This was then followed by a stream of high profile departures from the studio, including 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:transmedia boss Kiki Wolfkill, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:head of creative Joseph Staten, and franchise creative director Frank O&rsqu꧒o;Connor. The future of Halo was already looking grim, but with so many important figures jumping ship, the writing was clearly on th♈e wall for Infinite.
Still, Season 3 launched as promised in March, bringing three new maps - including an all-new Big Team Battle map called Oasis - as well as a new variation on Slayer called Escalation, Infinite’s first new weapon, the M392 Bandit, and a new piece of equipment called th🍌e Shroud Screen. Nothing revolutionary, but exactly the kind of things you expect from a seasonal update, albeit four months late, and six months after the start of the previous season.
But Season 4 came along just shy of four months later - the shortest gap between seasons at the time - and brought back the Infection 🍬game mode from Halo 3, two new maps, two new equipment pieces, new customization options for weapons, and an entirely new progression system called Career Rank. Season 4 also added tons of new features and improvements to Forge, including a minigame mode which blew the doors wide open for creators to come up with unique ways to play Halo.
With the start of Season 5, 343 has finally delivered two seasons on time, back to back, and with only a four month gap between ꦡthem. What’s more, Season 5 seems to be the most important content patch since last year’s Winter Update, bringing not just new content like maps, weapons, and game modes (Extraction is finally back) but some much needed style.
This season focuses on the Flood and introduces a variety of Flood-themed customizations that are unlike anything we’ve seen from Infinite’s stale cosmetic options before. The spore-like growths that infect the weapons and armor ✃pieces have an almost The Last of Us Cordyceps quality, but more alien. Infinite has desperately needed something more than generic space marine garb to spice up itsജ battle passes for so long, and this is a great way to add some flavor without betraying the identity of Halo. You can also mix and match your helmets with any core now. How that wasn’t always a thing is baffling.
Maybe the most important update is the introduction of AI enemies to Forge, which is going to give creators even more tools for creating their own games within Halo. mentions a few ways AI units can be useꦍd, such as spawning companions when you capture a neutral zone to fight with you, or creating Tower Defense, MOBA, and RTS game modes. Forge has become such a robust tool for creators that it wouldn’t surprise me if we saw gaming’s next mega-hit genre emerge from Halo Infinite the same way MOBAs were invented in the Warcraft 3 editor.
There’s even more to Season 5 too. Events have been expanded into four-to-six week Operations, which will function like free mini-seasons within each sไeason. There’s a new game mode called Firefight King Of The Hill coming, and new equipment called the Repair Field. You can now earn battle pass progress in custom games too, which is even more reason to dive into Forge to see what things people are coming up with.
Infinite is finally where it needs to be, and if 343 can continue to deliver new seas🌄ons on a regular 💎basis, the future of the game looks bright. There’s been a huge uptick in player activity on PC, with more people playing concurrently than we’ve seen since the launch of Season 2 last May. It may never recover fully, and there’s no doubt irreparable damage has been done to both Infinite and the Halo franchise over the last two years (and the year-long delay prior to that) but Halo Infinite is finally firing on all cylinders and delivering on all of the promises of a thriving live-service game.