Back in August, 343 Industries made the announcement that Halo Infinite would be launching without campaign co-op or Forge, with the former set to arrive with the game’s second season three months after its December launch, and the latter with the third season another three months after that. Recently, however, with the surprise early launch of the game’s multiplayer component, the developer confirmed that the first season had been extended to allow more development time for Season 2, which is now set to arrive in May 2022. So what does that mean for campaign co-op and Forge?
It means they’ve been delayed as well. Speaking in an interview with Eurogamer, 343 Industries’ head of creative Joseph Staten confirmed that Halo Infinite won’t be receiving campaign co-op until Season 2 launch in May 2022, and that Forge, in turn, shouldn’t be expected until at least late Summer. Staten says, in fact, that though those are very much 343 Industries’ goals right now, should other things end up taking priority in the months from now, there might be even more delays for the beloved features.
“Our goal still remains what I said before, which is to ship campaign co-op with Season 2 and Forge with Season 3,” Staten said. “But those remain goals. Those remain targets. And we can’t commit to any hard dates right now, because as we’re seeing with this multiplayer beta, other things might move up in the priority stack for us.
“If it turns out that our progression system just isn’t working the way that we intended, if we need to move some of these bigger rocks sooner, then we as a team will make those decisions and will clearly communicate to our fans why we’re why we’re doing certain things.”
Staten added: “It’s going to be a constant challenge to address some of those bigger rocks that I know players have completely legitimate feedback about. But we’ve got a couple big things that we still have to deliver to fans: campaign co-op and our Forge toolset are really big promises that we’ve made that we need to make good on.”
343 Industries has, of course, already started making fixes to the game’s grindy Battle Pass progression, but given how crucial both campaign co-op and Forge can be to the Halo experience for so many people (the former especially, and even more so given the campaign’s open-ended nature this time around), hopefully it won’t be too much longer than it already is going to be for those features’ arrival.
The campaign that the game is launching with, however, is looking promising. There’s been plethora of new footage detailing the game’s structure, its side missions, its main missions, and much more, and based on everything shown so far, 343 Industries is definitely looking set to deliver a solid experience. Here’s hoping the final product lives up to the promise.
Halo Infinite is out on December 8 for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC.