You can beat things in Halo Infinite from the edge, developer 343 confirmed.
You could never do that in a Halo game.
In a Q&A video, below, the game’s director Troy Mashburn was asked if the player can hit things off the edge of Zeta Halo, the ring on which Halo Infinite is.
“The answer is yes!” Mashburn replied before revealing a situation in which he did exactly that.
‘I can only tell you recently that I was playing and happened to be driving in a Scorpion tank. I came around the corner and I was face to face with a Wraith. Just out of pure luck, pure coincidence, I managed to turn the Turn over the edge and watch it slowly tilt backwards and fall into the abyss, which was incredible, unexpected, and it was just such a cool moment that just by accident happened, that I managed to get in a different way and catch them off guard. “
It’s easy to imagine a situation where you start pieces off the edge and watch it fall into space. A grunt, perhaps? That would be hilarious. Halo has always been a great sandbox for physics-based discs, and I think players will have a lot of fun testing out this feature.
The video Q&A meanwhile is doing fantastic work to give us a better idea of how Halo Infinite works and plays. I looked it up in full and highlighted some of the main quotes from the developers.
There is a blowing system that is not only visual but also sound, said Justin Dinges, leader of the campaign art. There is also a mist system that comes in at different heights and times of the day. Don’t expect storms to start, but Dinges said he is “very excited for the future”.
We know that Halo Infinite has a day / night cycle. John Mulkey, chief world designer, explained how the game is slightly different at night, saying in dark times you will see more patrols of Phantoms moving with their searchlights on. It adds a creepy element. You can also see that Grunts also sleep at work.
343 use Shield Jackals, for example, in dark moments, simply because they look cool in the dark and it’s nice to fight them in such situations. Some of the wildlife has a bioluminescence quality, and they will also see that they come out at night.
Speaking of wildlife, Mulkey confirmed that there is no hostile game in the wild. 343 rather wanted to focus on the struggle between the Bands and the Colonel. Players have already seen what was called ‘space gophers’ in a previously released footage. There are also a few birds of the birds flying. Apart from that, some of the bird creatures will draw your attention in places. If you see birds circling in the air, you can go watch it, Mulkey said.
Halo Infinite is not dual-use, confirmed chief sandbox designer Quinn Delhoyo. “We can not do everything,” he said. Nor in Halo Infinite is playable elite. Delhoyo said Halo Infinite is a master story and a spartan story in multiplayer. It should feel fair, competitive and balanced.
There are also no weapon upgrades in the campaign. Mashburn said there are things in the game that you can progress. Equipment items can be unlocked as you progress, and you can upgrade them to improve them. You can also find and unlock weapon variants.
There is a good answer to the question of whether Halo Infinite is an open or a semi-open world. Here’s Mashburn explaining how it works:
“When you talk about an open world or a semi-open world, there are a lot of preconceived ideas about what it means. Are you going to be there to collect learning and artwork and stuff like that? That’s not what we’re about.
“We were inspired very early on by missions like Halent: Combat Evolved’s Silent Cartographer. This mission, one of the things that sticks with me, is how open it was, how much player freedom, player choice you had to decide where you wanted to go, when to get involved touch, you can go inside, you can go outside, you ride on your warthog, you’re with marines.When we talk about the mental recharge of the franchise, we wanted to capture the core of this feeling of player choice.
“So when we talk about world size, it’s good to understand how we’re the size of the world we have. If you think of missions in Halo 5, there’s a mission in Viridian to raise a Scorpio. drive, and it’s cool, the space is designed for the Scorpion.Once you complete the mission, leave the Scorpion behind and go to the next mission.
“What we asked ourselves is what if you could keep that Scorpio? What if you could drive that Scorpio to the next mission and use it again? And then we start taking it further: what if instead of going through the front gate? from that mission, would you be able to chase that Scorpio up the hill around the back and blow up that Wraith that was parked there before the enemy even knows you’re there?
“It really struck a chord with us. That was what the experience we felt in Silent Cartographer was really about. It was about giving me a bunch of toys to play with, to put me in this world. where I can choose how and when and where I want to use those toys, and approach the situation as I wish.
“If we go back to world size, we have expanded the world to take into account these kinds of battles, to take into account Halo battles. So, we have bases that are open – there is a path that leads to the bases. , but there’s also the hill. And you can follow the road to another base behind the mountain. But it’s still Halo battles. It’s trying to be nothing else. And that’s what’s really exciting for us: it’s is the vast battlefield you felt like in Silent Cartographer now realizing with the cool next generation consoles. ‘
Halo Infinite has a main biome inspired by the Northwest (not a surprise, considering where 343 is based). Things called subbiomes within the biome. There are a few pallets at great heights, a wetland pallets and swampy wetlands. There are also more war-torn areas, called the Deadlands. Here you see the storytelling of the area that reveals what happened on the ring.
There’s an interesting discussion about the structure of Halo Infinite, and how its open world connects to the linear main story. I leave it to Mulkey to get started:
“You can not break and break the experience. You may be dropped off at a place of the Pelican, you may see your primary purpose, but on the left there is a UNSC service base overrun by Banished. Do I go there down before I go to the main story and take it back and maybe pull in a vehicle I can use? On the right there is a little green smoke over the cam.It’s probably marines fighting for their lives.And then over there is a large Forerunner tower, maybe I want to explore it.
“There’s always the anchor element of the core story that drives you through the world. You can not move the main storyline forward. We designed the story so that it is natural in the way it flows, so that it does not feel artificial… This flowing , ‘organic feeling.’
Over to Mashburn:
“The story of Master Chief, the main story of the game has a linear thread. As you progress through the story, you unlock new areas to explore and new places to enter. The story will progress in a linear fashion.
“In between, as you drive around, there are many other activities in the world for you to participate in. The bases or outposts are one. If you’ve advanced the game and unlocked some of these higher level vehicles, it could be the Scorpion, it can be a flying vehicle, you are absolutely free to take the vehicle to anywhere you want to go in the game, and you can use it to attack a base, or you can enter on foot. If you have rescued some Marines along the way, you can go in and take some Marines with you, the choice is yours.
“Places are connected in the world – you can drive from one place to another. Along the way you will discover cool elements in the world. You will see a pelican that crashed and slid over the terrain and it burned out. A area.You can explore the space.In some of these spaces you will find things like audio logs, and the audio books will tell a lot more about the ring, about what happened, about the battles that took place here, people’s personal stories.You can look at a space and really see what’s going on, and if you listen to the audio log, it compliments the story. ‘
The Halo ring you see in the air – the trademark skybox feature of the major Halo games – is a true 3D model, and it has visual benefits, such as creating an eclipse.
“You see it from different angles as you move around the world,” Dinges explained. “If you’re on the island of the game space and you look down over the world, you can see where it’s connecting to the ring again and going into the air. It plays well with the day / night cycle. The light source sun rises and you can see the shadows on the ring change because it is a 3D model.
“At some point in the cycle there’s an eclipse. The ring actually eclipses the sun and you get this midnight feeling. It’s pretty short, but it’s a neat moment while you play. If we’ve a 3D model we can do interesting things like that. “
Now go back to the scene. It’s in the engine, Mulkey explained, and there’s a seamless transition between the game and the tracks in Halo Infinite.
“We’re not doing traditional evictions,” Mulkey said. “There are no predetermined things. Everything is done live in the engine. We focused on making smooth transitions. Chief will move in a certain interaction and pull the camera from the head and go over to the scene. Everything plays right in Space. So, no matter what time of day it is, it will be. Whatever weapons you have in your hands, these are the ones in the cutout. And then it will move on to where you play. .
“We were looking to present the seamless experience as you go through, so we did not have the kind of games, insignificant, back to the game, an insignificant kind of experience. We wanted it to flow and that the story would play as the player’s experience. So there will not really be a distinction. It will take place in the car whenever that happens. “
Overall, I think this video did a great job of giving us a better understanding of how Halo Infinite actually works. I like the idea of starting things on the side of the ring, and visual effects like the eclipse, as well as the day / night cycle, also sound interesting.
Halo Infinite will appear on Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S and PC by the end of 2021.