Halo infinite almost lives up to its title.
Early on, you’ll find that the playground for this tentpole shooter isn’t just big – it’s huge and moves on the edge of what you’d find in a true open world game, à la, say, everything in Ubisoft’s portfolio. The format is a clear departure from the previous one gloriole Games that have always played as linear sci-fi shooters, mostly played in hallways of various shades of gray, purple, blue, and green, with the occasional larger landscape behind them. I’ve been playing for the past six weeks a lot from Halo infinite. Despite the size of its neat map, I’m not entirely convinced that it’s an open world game, at least not in the way we see it.
Note # 1: When I recently spoke to two creative leads about Halo infinite, Associate Creative Director Paul Crocker and Character Director Stephen Dyke, didn’t even say the phrase “Open World” during our nearly hour-long discussion.
Note # 2: Halo infinite, an approximately 17-hour game for most players, is neatly broken into three parts. The first section is a two-hour linear section that doubles as a tutorial (for newbies) or a walk back in time (for dilapidated players). The second third is a series of consecutive sprawling open areas, crammed with side quests, hidden collectibles, fast travel points, and bases to conquer, with each region culminating in a bombastic mission or two. The last third is a four hour linear sprint to the finish line.
Note # 3: This last section? Once you start it there is no quick return to what Dyke calls “the more open areas”. And you will not receive any advance warning about the point of no return. It sure is a little annoying. (“It’s up to us,” Crocker said.) But it’s also a silent refutation of the formula put forward by so many real open-world games that have come before.
Note # 4: Halo infinite is a manageable game by most accounts. It eschews the “if you see it, you can go” ethos that defines the open world genre, a genre that so often requires a three-digit game time commitment.
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Continue reading: Halo infinite Is harder than you’d expect, and it’s by design
“We never wanted to give the player a 100-hour drag,” said Crocker. “It still had to be that focused … experience, as opposed to, ‘Now Master Chief has to hunt some space crocodiles or something just to keep going.’ It works for other games, but it doesn’t work for Chief. “
Master Chief, for those who don’t know, is gloriolehas been the protagonist for many years and the backbone of Halo infinite, following the series’ collaboration with other playable characters in Halo 5. As a chief, you can forego your primary goals of rescuing a group of stranded Marines, taking down an enemy commander, or finding hidden technology that will improve your skills. And there are a number of cosmetic options that are usually hidden in the most remote areas of the map that you can use in. can find Halo infinite‘s independent, free-to-play multiplayer part. The optional stuff in Infinite is by and large rewarding.
“Ideally, at least [players] say, ‘Oh, that was cool,’ ”Dyke said. “Our goal has never been to make things that are off the beaten path feel dingy or feel like they’re blowing up time.”
But the constant telling still forces you to hit the next main mission. Whenever you get off course, your companion, an artificial intelligence unit known as a weapon, keeps asking you to get back on track.
“Shouting ‘go, go, go’ to players all the time basically encourages them to quit the game as soon as possible, right? If history tells you the world is going to melt, you won’t hang around examining the smoke on the horizon, ”Crocker said. “The hard part is making sure it feels important but not urgent – or more specifically, if it doesn’t break the Master Chief’s character, it doesn’t hurt your intent as a gamer, it still feels like you are Part of it is from this thing that is moving forward. “
Halo infinite is actually moving at breakneck speed thanks to a mysterious plot. Earlier gloriole Games generally had the same solid, if expected, narrative chassis: grab the big gun, beat the big bad guy. Halo infinite, however, makes Chief an unreliable narrator for the first time. And then there is the huge question mark from Infinite‘s take: Zeta Halo. It looks like a Halo (an ancient ring-shaped space station) but is inexplicably destroyed and is apparently capable of secret functions beyond that for which Halo stations are known: the galactic elimination of sentient life. (In this context Infinite isn’t exactly subtle. At one point, in case you don’t get it, Master Chief literally says that Zeta Halo is “not like the others.”)
Crocker, who quoted Halo: Combat Evolved‘s “Halo” level as the North Star in development, and Dyke, who said the same about this game’s “Silent Cartographer” level, wanted to capture the bottled lightning that gloriole on the map two decades ago.
Both early missions have a similar flow: you start out with a crew of idiosyncratic Marines, have access to a small fleet of futuristic vehicles, and can approach your tasks – firefights in sprawling outdoor spaces and claustrophobic indoor spaces – in a way that suits you. But beyond the mission structure, “Halo” and “Silent Cartographer” both gave the feeling that gloriole was far greater than what you could see on screen in terms of scale – a necessity given the technical limitations of the time.
“I remember playing it 20 years ago and saying, ‘This is amazing! Look at the grass! See how wide this corridor is! ‘ when you first land. Then you go back and look at it, and it’s not really wide, but at this point it’s wide enough, ”Crocker said. “[For Infinite], we wanted to find out how many walls we can tear down to make you feel just like you – that feeling of awe, wonder and mystery that you had 20 years ago. “
Nowadays, game development is no longer as constrained by technology, and the 343 Industries team has the tools to make their dream come true early on gloriole Levels. When gloriole‘s early levels sketched the blueprint, Halo infinite is the finished house.
“Me, [‘Silent Cartographer’] is one of those missions that is about thatbut scaled is just a great representation of what we delivered Infinite“Said Dyke.
You can see this most clearly during a mid-game level called “The Sequence”, the last “more open area” before it Halo infinite returns to the framework of a linear shooter. In “The Sequence” you need to extract data from four towers near you. The region is riddled with more than three dozen optional objectives – conquer bases, rescue troops from Marines, eliminate high value targets, and find collectibles – that you can tackle as you move from tower to tower.
Or you could capture an aircraft and turn it off in less than an hour.
Open world games give you the promise of infinity – that you can go anywhere, see anything, and do whatever you want, whenever you want. In Halo infinite, “The Sequence” segment is undoubtedly a healthy taste of what was preceded by appetizer-sized servings of the same dish in previous levels. But it eventually circles back to the dependable extraterrestrial corridors that one gloriole one gloriole. Yes, Halo infinite is huge. It’s still finite, however, and those narrower, more focused sections that shape the game still feel so central gloriole‘s identity – too central for in my opinion Infinite to really wear the cloak of an open world game.
“We wanted to start linearly and end linearly, and then everything in between encourages you to go out and explore,” said Crocker. “We wanted the ending to feel very impactful.”
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