Halo Infinite Story Is a Big Improvement Over 5, Gameplay Is Richer, Says Ex-Halo Dev

Halo Infinite is out later this year and the game went through a delay in order to further polish its quality. Now an ex-developer has shared some details on it.

The developer shared his thoughts in a video that was originally posted in Chinese (Mandarin) but it was transcribed by a user on the gaming forum resetERA. This information was later verified by Jason Schreier as being authentic and basically what he had heard from his source inside 343 Industries.

Here is a summary of what was talked about by the developer in his video. He mostly shared details on the behind-the-scenes development and the issues that they had to face when working on the game.

• His overall feeling on Halo Infinite: “In fact, I think the finished product will still be great. The story is a big improvement, and the gameplay is much richer, though the development cycle is too long. Don’t expect it to be an epoch-making masterpiece.”
• The company executives were overly ambitious. They wanted to make Halo Infinite a semi-open world game, so the engine needed to be changed significantly. They had to make the game and develop the engine at the same time (Due to engine defects, many workflows were not ideal, though they are now much more improved than before).
• Last year’s disastrous demo was because many engine features were not fully implemented at that time.
• For a variety of reasons, the game content compared to the original idea has been cut (same for multiplayer). “This has led to some things I’ve made over the years that no one will probably ever see.”
• The team at 343 (especially the low-level employees) works very hard, and many of them have experienced working overtime until the early hours of the morning in the past few years.
• Now he works at Certain Affinity, still doing some HI outsourcing work, and he feels good to be out of 343’s baggage.

 

Based on what has been said, it feels like the original vision was overly ambitious and the game had some content cut in order to make it to release. Although the story and gameplay impressions feel positive, the development troubles did lead to some issues especially with the engine development happening in parallel with the main game. Developers sadly had to crunch on the game to meet deadlines which is unfortunate.

Halo Infinite will be out in Fall 2021 for the Xbox One, PC, and Xbox Series.