Sometime in July we will officially see what Halo Infinite is all about. Infinite, announced nearly 2 years ago, is still quite a mystery. From the trailers we have seen, we have an idea that it might be a bit more open than previous Halo’s, but we have not seen any gameplay, nor have we gotten any meaningful details about the game.
We have been thinking a lot about Infinite as we are slowly but surely ramping up to the big unveil. One thing we have been thinking a lot about is that incredible key art for the game. After spending some extra time studying it, we noticed some key details. We believe that the key art is in many ways telling us what we want to know about the game and what we found is exciting. We also noticed an unmistakable comparison to another incredibly ambitious launch title.
The Need to Explore
Before we begin analyzing what the Infinite key art tells us, we need to look at what another games key art tells us.
Breath of the Wild, a game that launched in 2017 with the Nintendo Switch, is an incredibly ambitious open world game that lets you freely explore the environment.
We know all of this because the game has already been released, but in retrospect, the key art actually tells us what the game will be.
In the key art, we see Link looking over the world. He is looking over the world that will be free to explore to his choosing. He is looking directly at Hyrule Castle, which is the end game for Breath of the Wild. We see shrines, Towers, and other land marks that are fully explorable in the game. This key art is incredible because without knowing anything about the game, it tells you exactly what it is about.
We believe 343 is trying to do the same thing with Halo Infinite. Here’s what we noticed.
Halo: Evolved
1. An entire world awaits
The Key art shows the Master Chief standing on the edge of what must be the Pelican from the Discover Hope trailer. He is looking over what has long been speculated to be the main environment in the game, Zeta Halo.
The key art wants you to know that you will be able to explore an exciting world, one with many environments and secrets to uncover. Everything shown in the Key art is signicant. You will be able to explore this world, and it is yours to uncover. All you have to do is jump in.
2. Do you see that beam emitter tower over there?
The scale in the key art is impressive, and it is easy to miss a few key details. One that we found important is the prevalence of beam emitter towers and other taller structures.
The beam emitter towers are the structures that shoot beams of light in the sky, made famous in Halo: Combat Evolved. They were able to be explored in Halo CE, and we believe that this will be expanded significantly in Infinite.
What will you find in these towers? It is hard to say, but we believe that there will be several of these structures throughout the game that will be explorable. Perhaps each structure is unique and will hold upgrades or secrets to uncover.
Another significant structure that can be seen is a much taller “pillar”. When I think of a pillar in video games, I immediately think of climbing to the top to get a good view of my surroundings and filling in my map.
The pillar shown here isn’t included in the key art by accident. We believe we will see it somewhere in the game. Will it be used to fill in a map? It’s hard to say right now, but we believe we will be able to climb reach the top and look out over the landscape.
What we will find inside the pillar may be even more interesting. Recently, twitter user @TheEld2 pointed out some similarities between the pillar shown on the key art and a known “pillar” from the book Halo Primordium.
We believe that this pillar may actually be a structure known as the Palace of Pain. The part that catches our eye is when the pillar is described as having its top obscured by clouds. This is exactly what is shown on the key art, so the key art could be blatantly telling us that this is indeed the Palace of Pain.
The Palace of Pain is a flood research facility similar to the Library, Lockout, Cold Storage, and Isolation. The Palace is described as being “a place of unspeakable horror where the Forerunners took humans and experimented on them.”
The Palace is located on Installation 07 AKA Zeta Halo where Infinite is rumored to take place. Could we see the horrors of the Palace of Pain for ourselves in Halo Infinite? We think there’s a good chance.
Another detail that caught our eye was the several blue beams of light shooting into the sky. Are these simply beam emitter towers that are firing off? It’s possible, but it is also possible they may be key landmarks that will be seen by the player from far distances.
The blue lights are easy to spot and will be easy ways to draw players towards them. What is causing the light? That’s still a mystery, but they will surely catch the attention of anyone who sees them.
3. A world in pieces
The environment that The Master Chief is looking at is not in tact. The structure has clearly been separated by some kind of force. We believe that this could be an indication that the environment we are looking at is under duress. It also may be an indicator that the game will not truly be connected.
It has long been speculated that Halo Infinite will be “semi-open”. Not a true interconnected open world game, but rather a game that has huge open world sections that are separated. It is possible that this is where the pelican comes in. Could the pelican fly us between the separated masses? It is very possible, and with the power and speed of the Xbox Series X, there may not even be any loading screens during travel.
4. Stare directly into the light
If you pay close attention to the key art, you will notice that there is an incredibly bright yellow light that is reflecting off of Chief and the environment. To the far right of the art, you can see a small section of that light. Chief is staring directly at it and is shining off of his visor.
The fact that Chief is staring at it is not an accident. It is unknown exactly what it is, but it must be incredibly important or captivating if it has caught his attention.
This is maybe the most direct comparison we can make between the Halo Infinite key art and the Breath of the Wild key art.
Link is staring directly at the small gleam of light emanating from Hyrule castle. That is his goal, to make it there. In the Infinite key art, Chief is staring at a light as well. Maybe the light is important and Chief knows this. We have no idea what the light is yet, but we are intrigued to see if it ends up being important to the game.
That is all we could find, although there are sure to be even more secrets yet to be uncovered. We are roughly 2 months out from when we finally start to get answers to all of our questions. Will we look back at the key art when all is said and done as the first glimpse as to what our experience with Infinite will be like? We hope so.
Until then, make sure to comment below if you see anything that we missed. Make sure to follow @TheXboxEra on social media, and subscribe to our YouTube Channel.
This is an interesting find. I can’t wait to see how the game turns out.