Microsoft has released another deep-dive video on Halo Infinite in which several developers from the team spend 44 minutes answering questions about the game, which was originally supposed to launch with the Xbox Series X|S. One feature that won't be in the game, at least initially, is dual-wielding weapons. Introduced in Halo 2, the feature has been critical to many players' loadouts since then.
The whole video is treat, with sandbox designer Quinn DelHoyo, lead world designer John Mulkey, campaign art lead Justin Dinges, and gameplay director Troy Mashburn answering numerous questions that fans submitted on Twitter.
Among the things we learned is that dual-wielding is not in the game. DelHoyo said dual-wielding is "not currently in the cards," at least at the moment. "Whenever you set out to make a game with the size of Halo Infinite, there's so many things you can do. I think we have a very talented team where we can do anything but we can't do everything," DelHoyo said.
The developer said 343 instead chose to focus on Halo Infinite's weapons, gunplay, grenades, and melee, as well as equipment.
Also in the video, it's confirmed that Halo Infinite will adopt the Uncharted-style of cinematics in that there won't be any distinct cutscenes. Instead, cutscenes will blend into gameplay without giving you a black screen or a hard stop as the series did previously. There will be a seamless transition from gameplay to cinematics and vice versa, the studio said.
We also learned in the video that there are no playable Elites in Halo Infinite. "This is a Master Chief story and a Spartan story," DelHoyo said.
Someone also asked if you can knock things off the edge of the Zeta Halo map, and you can, while the developers also clarified how much of an open-world game Halo Infinite is.
Mashburn said people have pre-conceived ideas about what open-world and semi-open world means. For some people, this means going out into the world and gathering elements to craft, but "that's not what we're about" for Halo Infinite, Mashburn said. Halo Infinite was inspired by the open nature of Halo 1's Silent Cartographer mission and how much freedom it gave players.
"When we talk about the spiritual reboot of the franchise [with Halo Infinite], we wanted to capture the essence of this feeling of player choice," Mashburn said.
While Halo Infinite might not be a fully open-world game, Mashburn said players will have much more freedom than in the past. He referenced a Halo 5 mission where you pilot a Scorpion and then leave it behind as you move on to the next mission. In Halo Infinite, things might be different.
"What if you could keep that Scorpion? What if you could drive that Scorpion to the next mission [in Halo Infinite]? he said. "And then we started taking that future. What if instead of going through the front gate of that mission, you can drive that Scorpion up the hill around the back side and blow up that Wraith that's parked there before the enemy even knows you're around. This really struck a chord with us."
The full video is well worth a watch if you're a Halo fan looking for as much information as you can get. Alternatively, you can read a summation of the key points here on Reddit.
If you're after even more Halo Infinite intel, you can check out the previous Ask343 video that revealed a lot of new details on the sandbox elements.
Halo Infinite will release in Fall 2021 on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The game's multiplayer element will be free-to-play with microtransactions. Recently, developer 343 Industries released a series of images from the game's campaign mode that show off a massive graphical improvement.
Outside of Halo Infinite, Microsoft continues to update and evolve Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Its new Season 6 update includes new maps from the canceled Halo Online game.