Six long years after Halo 5: Guardians, Halo Infinite is ready to pick up the mantle of Xbox’s flagship franchise. This time, the man in green gets an open-world playground of his own, Zeta Halo. And with a new playground comes new tools to even the odds against the Banished.
What isn’t new is equipment that can be carried and deployed to change the momentum of any game. Equipment was first introduced in Halo 3, and is now a vital part of Halo’s ecosystem.
Why is equipment a big deal? Equipment disrupts Halo’s golden triangle of damage dealing: melee, grenades, and guns. The golden triangle lies at the heart of every Halo game, though the term grew in popularity after being mentioned in a Halo 3 documentary. And while Halo’s approach to health and movement is unique too, the golden triangle is what’s responsible for the skill-based combat that Halo is most known for. Halo Infinite even mentions it by name across hints dropped during multiplayer matches.
Through the last 14 years, equipment meddled with Halo’s golden triangle in both good and bad ways, and nothing Halo devs have introduced since has made such a long-lasting impression. Before we take a look at how Halo Infinite implements it, let's dive into the checkered evolution of equipment through Halo’s formative years to today, where it’s become a staple of gameplay in Halo Infinite.
Although equipment didn’t enter the picture until Halo 3, Halo: Combat Evolved brought a lot to the first-person shooter buffet back in 2001. Bungie’s history with the Marathon franchise shaped the golden triangle and kicked off the studio's obsession with mechanics that threw a wrench into that triangle over the years. Regenerating health, for example, drastically altered the mode of engagement by encouraging risky plays. Master Chief didn’t need to duck behind cover against plasma fire as he tore through Covenant ranks...unless you were playing on Legendary, of course.
Restricting players to carrying two weapons added a pinch of strategy to the mix, making power weapons like the Energy Sword and the Sniper Rifle even more meaningful. These weapons would temporarily sink their teeth into Halo’s golden triangle, forcing players to adapt to the change in rhythm. Bungie wasn’t afraid to experiment with its brainchild and this elevated firefights to the status of a dance to the death.
The second shuffle in Halo’s arsenal were powerups, temporary boosts on the field that could tilt the golden triangle in the wielder’s favor. Overshield beefed up your shields while Active Camo turned players near-invisible until they peppered a poor opponent with lead. Halo’s balance didn’t slip, however, as powerups could still be countered by skill or sheer determination.
Halo 2
Powerups would go on to become a mainstay in subsequent Halo titles, and the LAN party sleepovers were just getting started. But Halo 2 had other ideas when it came to polishing the golden triangle, and the big-budget sequel built on everything that made the original so compelling. Master Chief’s second adventure cranked up the heat with two big additions: Xbox Live multiplayer and dual-wielding.
Emptying a magazine into a Covenant Elite was one thing, but two magazines at once? Glorious. The uptick in versatility meant players could wield a plasma pistol and a Magnum at once, a combination lethal against both enemy shields and armor. This made for some spicy multiplayer encounters. Balance issues led to it becoming a short-lived addition to the franchise, though. Dual-wielding didn’t make it past Halo 3.
Halo 3
But the third iteration of Halo brought about the most radical disruption to the golden triangle yet: powerful single-use pieces of equipment that could be deployed at any time after they had been picked up. Both Covenant forces and Master Chief had access to tricks that gleefully complicated Halo’s refined melee-grenade-gun formula. Exhibit A: The protective bubble shield.
While the Deployable Cover and the Regenerator helped shore up defenses, other pieces of equipment let players go on the attack. The portable gravity lift and shield-depleting Power drain allowed Spartans to rewrite the rules of engagement. Battles could be won before the first shot, a change that sent the golden triangle spinning. Even vehicles like the Warthog weren’t safe from equipment like the Trip Mine.
But the additions divided fans and critics. Some believed Halo had completely lost sight of the golden triangle and was becoming the videogame equivalent of a buffet. Others argued the new equipment brought some welcome spectacle to the sport’s steadfast ruleset. Regardless of where you sat, Bungie knew it wasn’t perfect. The vision-blinding Flare, for example, was deemed unbalanced shortly after launch and met a quick end.
Halo 3: ODST
A year later, players could no longer wield one-time-use equipment in Halo 3: ODST, the spinoff that ditched Master Chief for a band of ODST marines. Players now had a limited health pool and a detective scan that tracked beacons across the game’s semi-open world. Finding a beacon put the player in the shoes of one of five squadmates, defining ODST’s non-linear narrative. Halo Infinite adopts this scan as well but seems to use it solely for useful collectibles.
Even if you couldn’t use equipment in the campaign, it still remained a national pastime of the Brutes, one of Halo’s many deadly foes. Equipment was fair game in multiplayer though as ODST borrowed its multiplayer chops from Halo 3. The golden triangle’s uneasy relationship with Halo 3’s equipment would only deepen with game studio Bungie’s last hurrah, Halo: Reach.
Halo Reach
Halo Reach attracted controversy once again through the introduction of reusable Armor Abilities. Instead of equipment, players could obtain armor abilities from enemies in Campaign missions. While many considered the addition of Sprint heresy, other abilities came under fire too. Multiplayer matches let Spartans pick loadouts with a Jet Pack or an Armor Lock, and the latter was even more notorious than Sprint.
Armor Lock turned players invulnerable at the cost of freezing to the spot. While it did take a moment to work, a Spartan could now make a mockery of power weapons and vehicles. When single-use pieces of equipment disrupted the golden triangle in Halo 3, it did so temporarily to inject unpredictability into firefights. But Halo Reach’s reusable Armor Abilities, despite being restrained by timers, disturbed the positive aspects of the golden triangle that Halo fans had come to respect. After Bungie’s exit, 343 Industries ended up stirring the equipment pot once more.
Halo 4
When 343 Industries took up the helm of Halo 4, fans were surprised they didn’t play it safe. Sprint was now available to every Spartan and Armor abilities returned for round 2. Fortunately, the more divisive abilities like Armor Lock were sent off into the sunset. Unfortunately, Armor Abilities weren’t the only things that made Halo’s golden triangle do a cartwheel this time around.
While abilities like Promethean Vision and Hardlight Shield didn’t break the system, armor mods and support upgrades pushed Halo dangerously close to its modern shooter rivals. Passive armor mods like quicker shield recharges could dictate the outcome of firefights. Faster reloads and stronger grenades were support upgrades that fractured Halo’s earlier emphasis on giving players an even footing. While Bungie’s implementation of equipment wasn’t perfect in Halo 3, it rewarded any skilled player. In Halo 4, players could level up and tinker with custom loadouts to drop in with more powerful gear.
Fans went from skeptical to downright frustrated by these changes, clamoring for a return to Halo’s skill-based combat. And 343 Industries listened. Halo 5 would do things differently. Very differently.
Halo 5
Lackluster campaign aside, Halo 5: Guardians doubled down on the golden triangle fans adored. Armor mods and support upgrades were gone for good. But that’s not to say that 343 Industries didn’t try putting its own spin on Halo once again. Equipment remained absent, and Spartan abilities changed form to now be available to all Spartans. Being able to clamber on edges and slide into firefights felt like a natural evolution of the franchise’s sci-fi heritage.
Halo 5 tried adding more options to Halo’s toolset, with mixed results. 343 wanted to make the triangle more of a square with the addition of another pillar: movement. In Halo 5, players could dash in any direction, letting them drop in and out of encounters. Unfortunately, this served as a “get out of jail” card against well-aimed grenades and rockets.