Halo Infinite's World Offers Players "More Freedom Than Ever Before"

It's already been established that Halo Infinite's campaign mode won't feature an open-world setting like one you'd find in an RPG, but it sure sounds like it'll be bigger than any Halo game before it. Joseph Staten the Head of Creative working on Halo Infinite, recently touched on that topic in the latest "Inside Infinite" update on the development of the game. Staten gave some convincing examples of the different ways players will be able to interact with the world of Halo Infinite and promised that players will have "more freedom than ever before" when navigating the world.

Staten's comments on Halo Infinite were meant to answer a question the developer said he had when he first joined the team: What kind of game is Halo Infinite? "Incredibly large" and consisting of "vast combat zones" that connect seamlessly to one another were some of the ways Staten described the game so far while encouraging players to take closer looks at screenshots shared in the Halo Waypoint updates. Staten said you'll notice wildlife and other elements in those images, and while he said Halo won't have a crafting system, it's those kinds of things that build out the world beyond just being a sandbox for players to shoot in.

But shooting and battling enemies will still be the focus of the Halo Infinite world, and Staten makes that world sound like a pretty enticing one with some examples of combat scenarios.

"What you will spend time doing is plummeting from a rocky overlook into the heart of an enemy patrol, eliminating their leader with a well-stuck Plasma grenade, using your Grappleshot to pull his power weapon off the ground and into your hands, and then empty its magazine into the rest of the patrol, scattering the nearby wildlife back into their burrows," Staten said."

He continued to set the stage further for these types of dramatic encounters which will be propped up by the world around the firefights.

"What's different this time is that you have more freedom than ever before to choose your path through the world," Staten said. "Follow a hidden cave system into a well-guarded fortress, wind your Warthog through a fog-filled mountain pass, capture a Banshee and fly to a floating ring fragment across a gap of stars. A strong narrative remains at the heart of the Master Chief's adventure, and your journey between story missions is entirely up to you."

Halo Infinite is scheduled to release some time in 2021.