Whether you enjoyed the reveal of Halo Infinite’s campaign gameplay or not, one unifying thought seems to be: What is going on from a narrative perspective? After all, Halo 5: Guardians ended on a rather big cliffhanger. And now, suddenly, Master Chief is gallivanting about on a Halo ring. Though 343 Industries have stated that the sequel will conclude the Forerunner Saga, what exactly is the deal?
A recent roundtable Q&A with studio head Chris Lee, associate creative director Paul Crocker, and head of design Jerry Hook provided some clarity. WCCFTech asked about balancing between the spiritual homage to Halo: Combat Evolved and continuing Halo 5’s story, to which Crocker replied, “Well, the balance is we want all players regardless of whether they played a Halo game, played all the Halo games, are immersed in the lore or have no idea about the lore, to be able to come on this journey and come out of it knowing a lot about Halo. It absolutely continues the story of Halo 5.
“It does it in ways people are probably not expecting and that is one of our goals as we create Halo Infinite. It’s not the cookie-cutter approach to some of the stuff that people think we’re doing. There’s a lot of mystery and a lot of events that are happening around it that we want players to find, experience and learn about the Halo franchise through playing the game.”
Crocker also noted that the E3 2019 trailer, which saw the Pilot floating through space, takes place after Halo 5’s ending, though a lot has occurred between the two games. “There’s a lot of things that happened between Halo 5 and Halo Infinite that led to Chief being in that predicament and all of that stuff is revealed as you play the game. So as I said before, the simple fact is that this is a continuation of the Halo 5 story, but it is all being designed to surprise players and do things in a different way. It’s a stepping stone to us building more Halo more stories on the ring and elsewhere into the future.”
Halo Infinite is currently slated to release this Holiday season for Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC. Slight multiplayer details were revealed recently, namely that the Grapple Shot and Drop Wall being pick-ups in maps instead of available in loadouts. More information will be coming “soon”, but it was also confirmed that split-screen co-op is limited to two players. Four players can still play co-op together, but only online.
