Halo Infinite Developers Discuss The Impact Of The Year-Long Delay

Halo Infinite was originally supposed to release in 2020, but Microsoft delayed the game an entire year due in part to the impact of the pandemic and working from home. A series of developers have now shared their thoughts on the additional development time and how Halo Infinite benefitted.

Associate creative director Paul Crocker told VGC that the additional year of development gave the team the time to play through the game completely multiple times and have a good think about where the game stood and how it could make it even better. In terms of specifics, Crocker said the team spent the additional time making sure the Grappleshot was “as fun as it possible can be,” while the team also added more tutorial elements to help people get up to speed at the start.

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Now Playing: Halo Infinite Campaign Hands-On Preview

Additionally, 343 “doubled down” on polishing the Halo Infinite boss encounters, and they now have “introductions” whereas only some of them had these before. The story has a “few more moments,” Crocker added, while the villain got “a little more screen time” and his boss fight was extended.

Character director Stephen Dyck said 343 was careful to not edge into the territory of wanting to simply add more, but instead, the team “added very selectively.”

“We were able to go back and adjust for pacing, and flow, so everything didn’t feel the same and big moments felt like big moments because we cleared some space before them,” Dyck said.

Campaign art lead Justin Dinges, meanwhile, explained that some of the additional development time was used to improve the game’s visuals, which were initially criticized.

“On the visuals, we knew we weren’t ready last year when we showed, but we needed to be there for Xbox, we needed to show the gameplay, get people excited. We already had a long list of things we needed to improve and complete and we were fortunate to get that time from Microsoft and Xbox to finish those things and improve those things,” Dinges said.

In other news, it’s come to light that Halo Infinite’s campaign has been purposefully designed with Normal difficulty in mind, which is a first for the series.

We recently got a chance to play a few Halo Infinite campaign missions, and editor Tamoor Hussain came away generally impressed.

“The first few missions of Infinite feel like 343 saying it knows that it has some work to do still; that it needs to prove that Halo, and Master Chief, still have what it takes. And that is exactly what it feels like the game is about: Unlike the last few games in the series, Halo Infinite doesn’t just want to say Master Chief is a legendary Spartan, it wants you to prove it.”

While we have to wait until December 8 to play Halo Infinite’s campaign, the multiplayer is available now in a free beta for everyone. Check out GameSpot’s 14 Halo Infinite beginner’s tips to get started.

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