Can you repeat campaign missions in Halo Infinite on Xbox, PC?

One of the joys of gloriole is its replayability. Ask any devotee and you will get a story about the endless repetition of “The Library” in Halo: Combat Evolved, or play Halo 2‘s “Delta Halo” for stepping outside the box and exploring this eerie Canadian-looking mountain range. Unfortunately, you can’t do any of that in, at least at startup Halo infinite.

Halo infinite, which hits Wednesday for Xbox and PC, is the seventh mainline gloriole Game and the first in six years since 2015 Halo 5: Guardian

. It’s also the first to forego a linear design, as most of the game takes place in an expansive area that you can explore at your own discretion. There’s no mission selection screen, in yet another departure from the series tradition, and no obvious way to replay any of the campaign missions (which are mostly exciting, I’ll note).

A representative from Microsoft, the publisher of the game, confirmed in a statement Polygon that you cannot, in fact, repeat campaign missions Halo infinite:

The aftermath gives you the opportunity to explore the wider area further, but you cannot replay from the same save file for missions like the first two that have not yet played in the ring. You could have any remaining FOBs, goals, [and] Audio logs, but the main story missions would not repeat.

Initially when I played through the campaign last week I thought this was a curiosity of the build made available to the reviewers, which was completely split off from the currently available and free multiplayer part. When I asked about it at the time, a Microsoft representative just said they were dealing with it.

Halo infinite‘s campaign is packed with great scenes and set pieces and, yes, plot twists. But the reason for so many key moments from the original gloriole Games – the reveal of the flood, the scene where Chief leaves Cortana, the moment Gravemind betrays Chief and the Arbiter – stick like glue, at least in part because they’re easy to repeat over and over again. Reinforced memories and all. With no option to repeat quickly Halo infinite

Missions, they may not achieve the same stamina as the greatest hits.

There’s also the issue of skulls, gameplay modifiers usually make situations more difficult, but sometimes they just add hijinks. (The one that doubles the size of the explosions is always an all time favorite of mine.) Skulls are definitely in Halo infinite. But even though I’ve played through the entire campaign and explored a decent chunk of the open area, I haven’t found a single one. You can juggle four storage files per account in Halo infinite; a representative said they are “pretty sure” that Skulls are unlocked on an account-wide level and can be applied to any of the four save files associated with your account.

Like most open-world and open-ish games, Halo infinite is flush with collectibles. After you’ve completed campaign missions, you can explore most of the map freely to mop up audio logs, spartan cores, or anything that you’ve missed. But the first two missions in the game are completely inaccessible from the main game world. Once you complete these missions there is no way to go back to the areas where they look for items that you may have overlooked there.

It is not clear why Halo infinite as such or whether 343 Industries will add the ability to repeat missions in the future, either via a level selection menu or an option directly on the world map. Microsoft did not respond to requests for comments from Kotaku.