We are only a few days away from finally seeing gameplay footage of Halo Infinite. Much like the Master Chief, the Halo community has been in stasis with a prolonged wait for the next Halo game. Before July 23rd approaches, let’s take a look back at the past couple of years and reflect on the journey the Halo community has taken since the game was revealed more than two years ago.
Back in 2018, rumors began of a new Halo game in development. Early rumors suggested it would not quite be Halo 6, and some rumors even suggested it might be an online only game, or maybe even a Battle Royale. The name “Halo Infinity” was passed around as a potential name, and the rumors began to swirl leading up to E3.
When E3 finally came around, the Xbox show up opened up with a trailer showcasing beautiful scenery, with incredible music. It was a mysterious trailer, and for most of the duration, it wasn’t exactly clear what the trailer was. And then, you see what looked like soldiers, walking through a ring like object, and then a long distance view. Suddenly, the Master Chief appeared, holding his helmet. It was quite the shock, and was an incredible moment. We then see the Chief driving a warthog through a very Halo Combat Evolved-esque open plane, with beam emitter towers and the classing Halo ring in the background.
The trailer was incredibly reminiscent of classic Halo, and we soon came to realize that this was the next big Halo game. It wasn’t an online multiplayer or battle royale spin off. This was the game we had been waiting for, and it gave fans of the series something that had been missing for a long, long time; hope.
Fast forward to E3 2019. The Halo community has spent a year theorizing what Halo Infinite was about. We knew that the game was going back to the roots of old in many ways, but we had yet to see any significant gameplay. Could the game be open world? Would it be a spiritual successor to Halo Combat Evolved? Many theories arose, and at the time of this writing these answers have yet to be answered. We didn’t exactly know what we would see at E3 for Halo, but it had been a year of silence after an amazing trailer in 2018. At the very end of the Microsoft conference, we finally got what everyone was waiting for, a brand new Infinite trailer. It introduced a new character, an unnamed pilot drifting in space on a broken down Pelican. We also finally see the Master Chief’s armor, a near perfect union of old and new. We see what we believe to be a heavily damaged Installation 07, and then the trailer ends with Chief about to jump out of a Pelican saying to “get ready”.
The trailer was great and was an exciting introduction into the setup of the game, but yet again, there was no gameplay. At that time, it had been almost 4 years since Halo 5, and everyone was hungry for new gameplay. 343 indicated after the show that they would go “big” at E3 2020, essentially indicating that they would be going silent until that point. It was a bit disheartening to know that we had to wait another year to see gameplay, but if the wait was worth it, then maybe the wait would be justified.
It has been a long 13 months since that point, and we are on the precipice of seeing then game in action. The anticipation for this game has been building for this years, and we cannot wait to see the game in action. Halo Infinite is the longest in development Halo ever, and the rumors seem to indicate that the game is incredibly impressive, but will it meet the hype of a 5 year development cycle? That’s the question that needs to answer.
343 has spent so much time building anticipating building this game that they need to deliver a great Halo game, one that exceeds their previous work and can at least come close to the original trilogy. That’s a tough ask for any studio, but considering the time and resources that have been put into Infinite, the expectations of a great game are not unfounded. Will 343 deliver? We only have a handful of days left to find out.
