[XBOX SOUND] Just the feeling of like being in firefight and hearing the click of the gun throwing it down, grabbing one off the wall. My gunner’s upside down, and he's like laying in; I see kill assist, kill assist, kill assist. Any pistol across any of the games, whatever gun allows me to feel the most like John Wick, I am there. Remember how excited I was with like this big combat with vehicles going all over the place. Halo means something different for everyone, right? I think that's what makes Halo great. What is Halo multiplayer? And for me it boils down to this tight arena style combat and big team battle; this wide open vehicle infused kind of combat. We're taking that awesome legacy or classic Halo combat experience and modernizing it in ways that will feel fresh to old players and really exciting to new players. We're going to give you great ways to customize your Spartan, really make your super soldier your own and we're kicking off a journey and experience that's going to involve month to month, season to season, year after year. For me working through the multiplayer off this game, and the toughest challenge I think is really about how do we respect the legacy of what came before us but still build something that feels new. We've tried to bring all these elements of legacy and really inject them into Halo Infinite, not just like in a in a way where you won’t notice it where you feel like, oh, they really designed this to be a celebration of previous Halo as well as an iteration of where Halo can go next. The vision of arena was all about a tight experience, is all about being fair, it was all about earning everything on the map, earning everything every kill you get. Going back to like what is the core foundation of what made the great Halo multiplayer arena matches great. Halo it’s really about fair and balanced starts so everybody is on equal footing when they come off the rip and then once they start running around it's about scavenging, it’s about finding new toys and kind of developing your play style as you run through the match. What makes Halo feel like Halo? I feel like the answer to that question is is the sandbox. The sandbox is Halo. When we set out to look at Halo Infinite from a high level and the direction of what it is, there's lots of exciting things there 'cause we really wanted to push. One of the things that are true to Halo, but one of the things that fans haven't seen yet? Equipment is back, but equipment is kind of has the has a bigger voice than ever before. We ask questions to ourselves of if you could go after you know a power weapon to get a bunch of kills, would you do that or could you go and get grapple to make sure that you swing yourself to the other side of the map to back cap a stronghold. We saw that as like another avenue of not just skill expression, but tactics for teams to coordinate around. The exciting combinatory nature of this toy plus this toy and how those interact with objectives is super amazing. Looking at how the powerups play like your classic powerups like the overshield, the active camouflage, for this title, what we're looking at, we're excited for is you pick that up and you choose when you activate it, it goes into your inventory. If you haven't used it and someone kills you in multiplayer, you drop that overshield and then they could take it. Use it for themselves. That, to me, is very legacy, but we took the equipment side of it and modernized it. When it comes to vehicles, we went in and decided to invest a lot in the systems. When I take damage in my warthog, my wheels can get blown off. I hope you get blown off. There's different aspects. Of the vehicle that change how my vehicle handles now, and that's something that's brand new. Everything we added to that is like this doomsday mechanic, so when you hit this threshold, the vehicle catches fire and it's very much you've got a certain amount of health or a certain amount of time and you choose what you want to do with the last minutes of this vehicle. We've got a cousin to the Warthog, which is the Razorback. The back has this like multi storage compartment that you can put a lot of stuff into. So if you want to put like detached turrets, power weapons, fusion coils, objectives. And that is what really making the Razorback kick a lot of butt in MP and Campaign. The levels define pace for the game, how frantic it is, and they define that iconic fantasy for players as they are entering that match. What do they want to do? What type of experience are they hoping to have? What kind of combat? What kind of dance floor is there available to have that combat in? For me, BTB is all about experiencing the full extent of the sandbox of Halo in just one match, right? Like you see, the vehicles the weapons, the equipment. We really want to take that kind of concept. Those fields you had, you know, playing the playing the previous games and just turn the volume up. Vehicles are no longer just spawning at bases anymore. We have Pelicans delivering them and we have a Commander in your ear telling you that. Pelicans are going to be dropping off these vehicles. Being tank is inbound. We have Halo two style delta Halo mission weapon pods that fall from the sky to resupply the field. That's where it makes it feel like, like a real battlefield and is very exciting. This is not just more players, this is just the certain beautiful slice of sci-fi chaos. The announcer is your big game playing moments. Your game modes just like the way it was before. Play chat. Personal AI is really a reflection and information for the players. So if a player grabs the flag, your personal AI is going to tell you to get that thing back to base and give you some like moment to moment updates. What if we can let players choose their own AI and each one of those are different voices so that players can find the one that fits their personality and their mood the best. They add to the sense of like me as a Spartan, being more important than for us. and in multiplayer it is really about becoming a Spartan. Your Spartan, you are you inside of the Halo universe? The body of customization content that we have on day one ensures that there will be millions of customization combinations for Spartans on the battlefield. Includes things like armor coatings, armor emblems, various armor effects down to the individual armor pieces, so your shoulders, your gloves, your kneepads, your helmet, your visor, your helmet attachments. Then you look at weapons and we've got a whole slew of customization offerings there. Vehicles have a a huge pool of customizations too. We support customization in the game. Players can do the same thing on halowaypoint.com as well as the Halo Waypoint app. The player also customizes the Spartan, the soldier inside the suit. We want the Spartan to represent the player as much as possible. They can change their body type and their voice, as well as choose prosthetics for the first time. Coatings offer us a unique opportunity to craft some hyper polished looks and let you express yourselves in ways you have never been able to before. So we're coming at this from a player first mentality. So what that means is that there's no random loot in this. There's no loot boxes. It's very important to us that everyone understands exactly how they unlock customization content, and we have a variety of places where they can do that. First off, is the Battle Pass. The Halo Battle Pass will never be taken away from you. What do I mean by that is once you buy it, it's yours and does not expire. In future seasons, you can purchase old Battle Passes as well as the current Battle Pass and choose which Battle Pass to put your progression towards. All of these rewards are single source so you're never going to be confused about where things come from. If you can unlock something in the Battle Pass, we're not going to let any other players circumvent that by purchasing it out of the storefront. Alot of our stuff is unlocked through playing the game. and only through playing the game. All customization is just cosmetic. Every season will have its own theme and introduce new components, new looks and gameplay for players. New opportunities to earn and collect cool rewards. We've seen the samurai already. That's one of our event armor cores, and that's going to be something that players can earn through game play for free. With us going free to play for the multiplayer part of the game like that was a big goal because you know how do we have a way -we can always bring players in, right? When we have a new update they'll just dip there toes in even if they just want to see it. Not only we free to play, but we're free to play on PC as well as console and what that means is we were able to get the biggest audience we've ever had. Everybody gets to play with no barriers and even better, your progression carries from one platform to the next. Getting our game to be on PC and console at the same time, Is an amazing chance for us to really just kind of excite new players about the game. and how can we do things like make crossplay interesting and like even just customs being able to play with your friends that like some people have PC's and some people have consoles and like let them talk to each other. Let them be friends. Commander: Why are you here? Spartan: To be a Spartan. Academy is a place that you can go within MP to kind of on board into the experience. It's great for newer players who are still picking up the controls and also people who want to warm up before they head into matchmaking. It's a series of experiences, both a tutorial to get started for the first time, weapon drills to practice with specific items, and also training mode that you can use to just get warm, explore the game as you want to For players who are new to Halo, let's help them learn what this universe is about. Some of these characters, what are they about? And help them kind of know the vocabulary that people have been speaking for now almost 20 years so that we may come in there, They don't feel like they're behind everyone else. They can kind of come in on even footing. I mean I'm super jazzed about bots, I think they're awesome. Our goal with bots has been to have a variety of difficulties that kind of provide a good training partner for wherever you're at in the experience. Partnering with our players on the road to launch and after launch is absolutely critical, right? I mean Halo has always been about the community conversation. We want to make sure we hear our players make changes where we can based on that feedback, make sure the game is ready for launch and then even beyond launch. What I'm genuinely excited about is taking the game out of our hands and putting it into the community's hands. Whether it's seeing what people make in Forge or the content that they're able to create with theater, watching streamers go after the game. To get involved, you go to haloinsider.com, put in your info with your gamertag and we should be able to reach out to you if we want to invite you to a Halo Infinite Flight. We feel like we've got a pretty good selection at launch and what's going to be there for our fans and this isn't going to be something that is just a static set of items. We have some new stuff in the works already and just can't wait to really get into that. As soon as this game comes out. New maps, new modes, new ways to customize your Spartan launches. Just the beginning. Now we're just going to be able to talk, interact more frequently, and that's just going to be great. That is the future of Halo Infinite multiplayer. Thank you to the community for all their feedback over the years so far, and I'm looking forward to the road to launch, launch itself and beyond. [MUSIC] [XBOX SOUND] Play it day one with Xbox Game Pass
Nom-expiring battlepass is a great choice. And it just makes sense - if a new player joins months/years after launch and gets hooked, they can buy a bunch of old battle passes to grind out
Recaps: (from r/halo)
The guy that posted originally definitely missed some like bots but it's a decent list
Really happy they took the battlepass system from MCC. The worst thing about all battle passes is the FOMO factor. Now you can just complete it at your own pace.
Wow now if bungie could implement the similar thing to destiny that'd remove the huge fomo factor people are experiencing in their current seasonal model
I will say that this video was very reassuring. The battle pass approach follows in the footsteps of MCC's, the pace of gameplay looks a little bit slower than 5's, and the grapple looks really fun to use. Doesn't look like the thruster, hover, or shoulder charge from 5 are coming back either.
Honestly can't find anything to complain about, definitely surpassed my expectations. I'm pretty excited to play it now.
This was an impressively good presentation. Usually these things are full of fluff, but this hit a lot of good talking points and great features.
Customizing your character, AI, non-expiring battlepasses, no pay-to-skip cosmetics and... well there was so many good points I can't even remember them!
Edit: forgot free to play multiplayer cross platform.
This was a really reassuring presentation. It genuinely looks like this could be the mythical Halo game that appeals to both new and old fans. From classic Halo, we have that emphasis on the sandbox once again with the equipment. And from modern Halo, it keeps some of the base movement mechanics that modern audiences consider "standard" (sprint, clamber, zoom for all weapons).
What really sold me was when they were talking about the new Warthog. It's "just a vehicle," but the fact that it can carry both additional weapons AND objectives in the backseat gives it a unique role in the sandbox. Its the type of change that feels like it's done for the purpose of actually improving the game by adding new toys, rather than some dramatic change for the sake of "mixing things up."
I can see non-Halo fans looking at this and going "there"s nothing new here, why should I care?" And that's totally fine. But I think that this game could be EXACTLY what the Halo community needs. Something that's just a straight-up "good Halo game" for everyone.
Man, I am getting dangerously hyped lol
Not only does their approach to the battlepass eliminate FOMO, it also takes care of what I call "AHMO" (Annoyed at Having Missed Out), which happens when you start playing a game late, or come back to it after a long break, and you see so many in-game items that are impossible to obtain, or can now only be bought a-la-carte after previously being included in a battlepass or other time-limited reward. Sometimes it's so frustrating that it turns me off of getting into a F2P game that's been running for several years, as even if I grinded the game hard, I'd still feel like I'm missing out on too much content and/or being left in the dust by long-term players because they have a dominant weapon/vehicle/etc. that I can't get anymore.