Posted by My friends and I have been looking forward to Halo Infinite for some time now, and a few days ago we finally saw the gameplay reveal. And in that eight minute gameplay reveal, there was quite a bit to take in, so here are my thoughts on the game thus far.
First and foremost, I think the game looks fine visually. I know that the graphics from the demo are already a bit divisive (to put it mildly), but frankly I have no issues with how the game looks. In my opinion, the game looks like how Halo Wars 2 would look if it were a first person shooter as opposed to a real time strategy game. In addition, Halo Infinite gives me very classical Halo vibes, just incredibly modernized and cleaned up.
And on the topic of Halo Wars 2, that seems to be the primary influence in Infinite. I’m not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I think that The Banished from Halo Wars 2 are a fantastic and intimidating enemy, so I have no qualms with them taking center stage in Infinite. However, this makes me wonder what ever happened to Cortana and her army of Guardians since Halo 5: Guardians didn’t actually resolve that at all. And towards the end of the demo, Master Chief encounters a high-ranking Brute, who spouts off quite a bit about how humanity is beaten (again). In this speech, the Brute mentions how The Banished are working with The Harbinger. I have no clue what this Harbinger is, but I wonderful if it has anything to do with Cortana and the Guardians. I assume that everything will be revealed as time goes on and the game is actually out, but I’m definitely excited for these questions to be answered. Similarly, I think that the enemy designs looks fantastic and a lot more like the classic enemies featured in the earlier games. One of my biggest gripes with Halo 4 and Guardians was that I never really liked the Storm Covenant design. However, the Elites, Grunts, and Jackals working with The Banished seem to be sporting their more classic designs, and I’m very happy about that.
As for the gameplay itself, the game looks pretty smooth. It looks like Infinite will keep some of Guardians‘ enhanced mobility (mainly the ability to slide and sprint of course), in addition to a new grappling hook. It also looks like the environment will play a much bigger role in the game since Chief can now do a lot more with fusion coils alone, like throw them at shade turrets. This shouldn’t be very surprising since Infinite is going to be an open world game. And I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’m used to Halo games always being relatively linear, and while Halo 3: ODST did experiment with an open world a little bit, I never felt like the game was truly open world. Infinite looks like it will be truly open world, and I really hope that 343 does a good job with it. While I thoroughly enjoy open world games, one of my biggest issues with them is that it’s so easy for them to feel empty, especially once everything has been done. Take Just Cause 3 for example; I played that game for hours on end and did almost everything it had to offer, but once I was done, I was incredibly bored. Once everything had been liberated, the map just felt empty, and therefore boring. I really hope that Halo Infinite does not suffer from this problem.
Something else that I’m a bit concerned about is upgrades. In the demo, when the map was pulled up, there were two other tabs: upgrades and databank. I assume databank will just include discovered lore, which I’m more than ok with, but upgrades are a bit more ambiguous. Hopefully the upgrade system will flow well with the game and not feel too out of place, but we’ll have to wait and see. And as for the map itself, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand I really appreciate it and I know that it’s a necessity for an open world game, but on the other hand Halo games have never had maps like this.
And now for my final point of conversation: the weapons. The weapons shown off in the Infinite demo left me a little disappointed and optimistic. While the classic Assault Rifle will return, Infinite scraps some of the other classic guns, like the M6 Magnum and Shotgun, in favor of the new MK50 Sidekick and CQS48 Bulldog. I know it’s such a minor thing, but it’s going to feel weird using these new weapons after having used the classic ones for almost twenty years. However, I’m very excited to see the new Banished weapons. The demo showed off the Ravager, Pulse Carbine, and Mangler. All of these weapons look super fun to use, and I can’t wait to see what else The Banished have in their arsenal. Finally, the demo did show off a truly new UNSC weapon: the VK7B Commando. The Commando looks sweet and reminds me a lot of an FN Scar. And while I may be a bit concerned about some of these new weapons (mainly those that replace the classics), I’m very excited to see what all Infinite’s sandbox has to offer. Plus the actual gunplay looks super fun and satisfying. I also really appreciate how weapons with bayonets look like they’ll actually do more melee damage for once. It’s minor details like that that really make me excited for Infinite.
Overall, I’m excited for Infinite. While I do harbor some reservations mainly due to the new innovations, I’m cautiously optimistic that everything will turn out fine. Still, I won’t know until the game is fully out, but until then I’ll wait with heavy anticipation.
Broad Scope Entertainment 