Unfinished: Halo Infinite (Campaign)

oh yeah

oh awesome!
Good to have an unfinished for this. Am SO curious.

You see that Halo? You can go do Halo with John Halo over there.

What is Gerstmann's shirt?

@jeffgrubb Rez

Really enjoying the mp.

So, first off, what I'm seeing here looks incredible. I'm a life long Halo fan. My mom picked up Halo CE for me when I was 7 because the guy ringing her up for it assuaged her concern over the M rating because the blood was alien blood (big props to him). And ever since then the series has been one of those core pillars of my gaming career for the last 20 years. Was very disappointed by both Halo 4 and 5 for various reasons. But everything I've been seeing both in this video and in others, plus my multiplayer experience, has me right there with Jeff in it making me feel the most excited for Halo I've been since Halo 3.

But the one thing I found interesting in particular from Jeff was his comment about how 343i seems to be moving away from that Bungie Era legacy and planting their own flag. I think that is partially true given how they've moved it into a more open world layout and the new gameplay elements, but I actually think this is leaning into that Bungie Era nostalgia and legacy harder than they ever did in Halo 4 and Halo 5. With those two games it actually seemed really apparent that they wanted to differentiate themselves to the point they almost completely got rid of the famous Halo soundtrack and explicitly endeavored to create a completely new score for their games. Now they are right back into the Marty O'Donnell scores. They've gone away from the Spartans looking super bulky and tank like and have reverted back to the sleeker design that they had in the Bungie games. And visually it just has that more classic look to it with much simpler designs and brighter colors that Bakalar says (and I think with some validity) is somewhat cartoonish. And they're clearly getting away from the mess that was Halo 5's campaign in favor of something simpler and more grounded in Master Chief just being a hero rather than a more "cinematic" drama with too many goddamn characters.

Which is all to say that I see this as 343i finally recognizing that there was a lot of value in all of those aspects of Halo that people fell in love with from the beginning and that it was kind of silly to move so far away from them (I mean, who the fuck tosses out a score as genuinely iconic as the one from Bungie's Halo games). I think that, so far, Halo Infinite looks like they're taking that classic Halo experience and feel and bringing it into a modern context in a way that I really love. It really does come off as the true successor to where things left off with Halo 3, but with 13 years of videogame evolution behind it.

I'm so ready to Halo it up to end the year.

DAMN!

this looks tremendous

still no traditional ADS. huh.

Hope it has splitscreen co op.

This looks like a very good Halo experience. Seems like the year delay was well worth it.

I'm glad to hear positive buzz about Infinite, I feel like there's been too many middling 343 entries from the campaign side of things. Tried out the multiplayer the other day and it just felt really good.

If Destiny 2 is gonna be this weird seasonal structure with all the negatives that come from running a live game (including the baffling move of shelving the base campaigns) I'm looking forward to a solid space shooter campaign in another three weeks.

And if nothing else it helps that it's all gonna be on gamepass.

It's so funny that they just can't close the loop on Cortana. Really interesting idea of rampancy that could have led up to a really touching character moment that just gets teased then dragged out over 4 games until they apparently just have you grab a freshie off the rack and pop it in your head

@moondogg: I mean, traditional ADS never made much sense in Halo for a couple reasons.

First, from a story perspective you're dealing with genetically modified super soldiers wearing state of the art combat armor, including a helmet with a visor that links to the weapon they're using and displays the reticle and weapon info accordingly. Obviously from a game point of view that's for the player, but I think even in Halo CE manual materials they mentioned how all the zooming and reticles are supposed to literally occur in the visor. And wearing a relatively large helmet and trying to look down the sights of a gun wouldn't make much sense.

But from a gameplay standpoint, Halo isn't like Call of Duty or Battlefield where you have a dozen weapons that occupy a single category like Assault Rifles, Shotguns, Submachine Guns, etc. In those cases it makes more sense to apply traditional ADS because it helps differentiate all these different weapons in a category by giving them varying degrees of effectiveness and accuracy from hip fire and ADS. But In Halo you tend to just have weapons that occupy a niche with the differentiating factors being in projectile behavior and weapon effects. The Assault Rifle is your medium to long range machine gun while the Shotgun is your close range weapon. The SMG occupied the close to mid range and the BR the medium to long. And then you get the Covenant weapons that take some of those archetypes and give them twists like combine explosions, EMP inducing plasma charges, bouncing projectiles, etc. Adding in ADS that is meant to further improve the accuracy of the weapons just seems unnecessary given the weapons should focus more on just being suitable for a certain style of play, environment, or range. The Halo sandbox excels when its individual pieces are at their best individually, but have to be utilized properly.

I swear i've heard the "zelda-like" audio cue before, was it on a Nokia phone? @jeff

This looks fantastic. Hearing Jeff talk about this has definitely raised my excitement. I enjoyed the recent Halos more than most, but upon reflection, I too have forgotten a lot of it as well (not that I remember much of the details in the earlier Halos, which I technically played even more recently). But either way, this stuff just looks like fun.

That's Halo

I personally thought that the Halo 5 campaign felt stale as hell and I gave up on it so I am all for shaking things up this time. I am going to go back and try and get through Halo 5 before the Infinite campaign is released though.

It's a shame the co-op won't come until later down the line but I am still very much looking forward to this. The multiplayer has been a blast this last week, feels like I'm playing halo 3 after school again except now it's halo after work and maybe I can't stay up as late as I used to.

I'm hoping this is structured in such a way that I can do the main story missions and leave most of the side stuff until co-op releases so I have some fresh things to do with friends but if it ties into an upgrade tree then maybe not? Looks like it will be hard to resist exploring...

let's start Halo-ing

looking good.

Yo as a Halo guy I'm really into what I'm seeing. I'm really looking forward to this game.

@jeffgrubb: I think that's the reticle from Rez.

Man, I dunno, the multiplayer is really fun with great gunplay and movement and a really good pool of weapons, but since it was known this was gonna be an open world game I feared this was gonna be another MGS5 situation of great gameplay on the most bland boring levels of the series. I think this may be the first one I play more MP than SP, seems like I might finish the campaign once and never play it again, where as I still go back to those Bungie campaigns all these years later.

I'm so glad you can turn off the speed lines.

Can't wait to do a Halo as Dr Jonathan.

"Don't worry, I'm gonna go do a Halo"

When Jeff said "two humans," I had to pause this video and go watch another.

As a huge Halo fan, and as someone that hasn't played a Ubisoft game in a decade, I'm still not sure what to expect. The open world stuff just sounds like the Gears 5 approach in those two "open" acts.

Halo's combat is fantastic, and I'll take it in any context. A set piece moment, Firefight, multiplayer, and big open settings. I'm still curious how their new approach will translate, since the previous games all had giant areas that were still expertly authored. It's why I can still remember specific fights from the even the first game. Hopefully it's not just a scattershot (ha) approach to level design and it still keeps that authored feel.

Halo 4 and 5 have better campaigns than you remember. They're fun as hell. So personally, Infinite has a pretty high bar to reach (ha).

Jeff definitely doesn't remember the last two games since he described the two teams story element of 5 but attributed it to 4. :D

I didn't mind 5 as much as others did, but it definitely had its flaws and I get why people didn't care for it. That being said it seems a little weird that the ending of 5 set up Cortana and her army of A.I.'s and Forerunner robots being the new big bad and declaring war on the galaxy and Infinite seemingly has had a big time jump and you aren't actually going to play the story that the last game set up.

It looks like Doom for mobile

Super jazzed about everything shown here. The year long delay seems pretty worth it so far and I can't wait to jump into this.

I was most curious as to how 343i was going to incentivize you to clear outposts and the like, and better versions of the weapons seems like a great move. It would be nice if you could see what the reward is before doing it, but I have 30 minutes left in the video so maybe that is a thing they do.

@moondogg: Halo 5 had ADS but wasn’t that well received by Halo fans. I think that combined with the new Doom games and Overwatch being hits with no ADS convinced 343 to move away from it. Given how Halo Infinite is being received It was the right decision.

the buzz around this campaign is realllly intriguing

I can't help but get Metal Gear Solid V vibes. It was the first game in the series that had an open world where you could raid enemy camps and pick everyone off. The first mission was a MGS type mission where you're sneaking around in a hospital. The character you play not being called Master Chief is interesting because, the plot twist of MGSV is that you're not playing as Big Boss but as a body double who got plastic surgery.

YO holy crap I am excite

I'm so excited to play this now. The multiplayer has been a ton of fun and runs pretty well on my PC. I just hope I get decent performance on the single player as well. I can't wait to "do a Halo" myself.

wut

I can't wait to do a Halo

John Halo did the thing and it looks rad!

Yesssssss the Halo is BACK.

Halo 5 so forgettable it became Halo 4.

The speed lines when Master Chief starts running are killing me. 😂

This game looks great, but what a bland artstyle? Weird speedlines and cartoony enemies.

I can't believe I'm excited for this. It's a nice change. This looks like a blast. I love Doom Eternal, but I am happy to play an fps with lived-in levels again. I know several have that. I meant a fun-first fps.

jesus jeff b's just constant negativity on the franchise is boring and cringy to constantly hear. We get it dude, you don't find any halo memorable and apparently sounds like you dislike every second you're playing the campaigns. Don't need to hear it 50 times the first half hour.

One thing I noticed that's really awesome that neither Jeff commented on is how the enemies seem to have actual conversations with each other.

why is bakalar such an out-of-touch rube that mocks people who like halo's combat, story, and aesthetic. this guy rather play the most 'monotonous' of all shooters, CoD--yet has the ghaul to throw all this shade Halo's way. i find it incredibly ironic. the way he frames it constantly as this obvious status quo is just mind boggling. that's right jeff, no one has ever liked or endeared Halo in their lives! your perpective is very informed!