Halo Infinite, the long-awaited next installment in the Halo franchise, finally has a release date set: Dec. 8. The date was announced today at Gamescom.
Infinite has been delayed over a year after fan backlash to a subpar trailer released in August 2020. Since that infamous trailer, 343 has gained lots of fan praise for the visual improvements to Infinite shown off during a technical test during late July to early August, as well as the smooth gameplay.
Recent Halo launches have been far from excellent. Halo 4 and Halo 5: Guardians were criticized for their single-player campaigns’ lack of depth and their multiplayers’ hard pivot from what many saw as core mechanics of Halo. Specifically, Halo 5: Guardians was the subject of fan ire for doing away with split-screen single-player, one of the core pillars of the older games. Halo 4 dealt with issues in multiplayer heavily, with fans pointing to increased bullet magnetism and a hard pivot into becoming more like Call of Duty with sprint becoming a base ability and customizable loadouts.
Regardless of whatever people have said in the past about Halo, Infinite seems to be a recentering of the franchise. The movement mechanics of Halo 5 have been tuned down, sprint doesn’t appear to be as fast, there’s no thrust, and the armor abilities Reach brought into the game have been mostly ditched for equipment, scattered around the map like power weapons.
Infinite won’t have the popular Forge mode or split-screen co-op at launch, but fans seem to be extremely excited about Halo returning to its roots this winter.
