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August Inside Infinite (update on campaign at the very end from Joe Staten)

I personally needed to hear this, that it's specifically about focusing on optimizing and focusing on major bug fixing and performance rather than preparing some gameplay demo for us to see, which will take time away from bug fixes and other important work. I'm okay with that, but it still tells me that this game is indeed coming in pretty hot.

I literally skipped all else. I only wanted to read about campaign.


I’m currently streaking through the lower stratosphere, on a late-night flight back to Seattle from Los Angeles, having just finished representing the great work of the whole Halo Infinite team on the Gamescom: Opening Night Live broadcast. It feels terrific to finally reveal our launch date, and we hope you enjoyed meeting Commander Agryna, who you’ll be getting to know much better as we start unspooling the Season-to-Season story of Halo Infinite Multiplayer.

Before boarding my flight, I had a chance to read some of the commentary online, and I definitely hear the disappointment about not seeing Campaign gameplay on the broadcast. So, I wanted to take this opportunity to: (1) shed light on why we chose not to show Campaign right now and (2) assuage your concerns about where Campaign is at this point in the production process.

As I mentioned in last week’s Development Update, the whole Halo Infinite team is in shutdown mode. This means we’re done with feature work and focused on crushing high-priority bugs. We’re spending lots of time playing the game, verifying fixes, and generally doing all we can to ensure Campaign (and Multiplayer!) plays great on all platforms—from an original, 8-year-old Xbox One to a brand new, ultra-spec PC. This is a very challenging task, even for a large and experienced team.

In many ways, shutting down a game is like being on final approach to landing an airplane. And if you’ll forgive a bit of aviation-geekery, the entirety of the team is essentially in a “sterile cockpit,” which is to say: we’re at a critical phase in the flight that is Halo Infinite, so it’s extremely important to avoid distractions and stay focused on mission-critical tasks only. For Campaign, that means putting maximum effort into ensuring the wide-open, adventure-filled experience you’ll all get to play on December 8th is a great as it can possibly be. And gameplay demos and trailers not only take a huge amount of effort to do well, they also take cycles away from bugs and other shutdown tasks.

I would like to share, however, that right before I left for Los Angeles, I had to pause a full playthrough of Campaign that I started late last week. I’m going for a 100% run, which means completing all primary and secondary missions, finding all collectibles etc. I’ve played Infinite’s Campaign multiple times. But every time I do, I always find something new, tucked away on Zeta Halo. Sometimes these are quiet little bits of environmental storytelling, such as an abandoned but desperately defended Marine recon post, high on a lonely mountainside (fortunately, the Banished missed the fully loaded S7 sniper rifle that the Marines left behind). Sometimes these are combat encounters with deviously polished scripting, for example: a UNSC forward operating base that seemed abandoned… until I heard the laughter and taunts of multiple, energy sword-wielding and cloaked Elites, as I stumbled into their trap.

I hope all of you take comfort from the fact that, honestly, I can’t wait to get back home, fire up the build, and hit “Continue” on the Campaign. No matter how many times I play, Halo Infinite remains, fundamentally, super fun to play—and we’re very eager to share all the fun with you through captured gameplay, trailers, and other content once we get this plane safely on the ground. But for now, it’s focus-time in the cockpit as we stick the landing. Please, keep those seatbelts fastened, and thank you for your patience and support.
 

salva

Member
Trust Me GIFs | Tenor

I want to believe, but just gotta wait for some gameplay
 

Plantoid

Member
Better to have people working full day crushing bugs than making trailers that's for sure

But we want a damn gameplay video, you own us after 2020 reveal...

Only thing that makes me give a free pass for you is that the game is free and the multiplayer looks hot and already pretty much playable
 

Kagey K

Banned
The longer they wait the more they put pressure on themselves. People are already spouting the “next Cyberpunk 2077 “ stuff and we know , given the memes and last years negative response, there will be folks waiting to shit on it.
It doesn’t matter when they show it, there’s always folks sitting around waiting to shit on it, regardless of if it looks amazing or looks like shit.

People are going to inundated with stuff when the taps turn on and the marketing machine kicks into full gear, and all this will be forgotten and some new concern will pop up.
 
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Stuart360

Member
Really liking how the campaign is sounding. It looks like eploration, and item finding is a decent part of this, and thats important in open world/semi open world games.

Also glad they just have their head down and working hard on polishing. No matter what they show to us, people will be negative so yeah forget that, get polishing it up.
 
It doesn’t matter when they show it, there’s always folks sitting around waiting to shit on it, regardless of if it looks amazing or looks like shit.

People are going to inundated with stuff when the taps turn on and the marketing machine kicks into full gear, and all this will be forgotten and some new concern will pop up.

Look at the positivity the tech test got snd that was only against bots. People will naturally question what’s going on when , considering what happened last year, they are content to show off multiplayer and let people try it way early , yet nothing forthcoming gameplay footage wise in terms of campaign.

The longer they leave it the more pressure they put on themselves. If people are going to criticise it anyway or come up with another concern as you put it, what is there to lose?
 

ZehDon

Member
I don't mind waiting, but the longer 343i wait to show that they've actually improved the campaign, the more disconnected the fanbase is going to grow. The tech preview showed us 343i have made improvements, but the Campaign was a disaster the last time we saw it and that's the part Halo fans - like me - need some reassuring on. At this point, I suspect dropping similar generic combat encounter footage with better visuals just isn't going to cut it. The silence on the campaign tells me 343i is more than aware of that - which is actually a good thing. I'd argue they need to deliver a Halo 2 E3 calibre showing to win over the sceptics, but, realistically, they just need to deliver something that makes people excited for the tale they want to tell. "Believe". "Finish the Fight". Hell, even "Hunt the Truth" was exciting... except that they didn't actually deliver that last one. Fingers crossed they deliver something before the campaign actually releases - because if they basically stealth drop a Halo campaign, that's as good as 343i admitting they done fucked another one.
 

THEAP99

Banned
Man, I don't buy it. There are different teams that handle different things.. like you know, a marketing team to cook up some gameplay.. I don't think they're confident in the campaign TBH. But hey, at least it's on gamepass and the multiplayer is free to play.. but i'd lower expectations
 

Salz01

Member
You know on my ps5, I can record a few mins of gameplay and upload it to YouTube. Can he not do this on Xbox? I have a XSX, but been waiting to for this game to use it. So not sure if it has gameplay upload ability. Maybe it’s hard?
 

MrFunSocks

Banned
I feel like all the concern about the campaign is the same as all the fake concern about not seeing gameplay on series x games long before the console launch. It all amounted to nothing, because we knew games were playable on it and releasing because there weren’t developers cancelling and delaying games for it left right and centre, and straight up telling us that the hardware didn’t work.

Halo Infinite has some people “shook”, and the FUD and concern campaigns are well underway. The day the release date got announced we had people saying they still believe it will be delayed ffs lol. Now we have people saying they’re scared to show it cause it’s a mess etc. Do people really think that after delaying the game an entire year they’d release it as a buggy mess? What sense does that make?

It’s pathetic. The games going to release, and those concerned people aren’t going to buy it because they never were going to in the first place.
 
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I feel campaign would have been a complete shit show if Joe didn't come on board to help
This is exactly my feeling as well. With Staten on board I'm actually less worried about the single-player. I do have to say though, that not having the co-op campaign shows you that they are still behind where they should be for a game that was supposed to launch a full year ago. I do think multiplayer and campaign will probably come out pretty polished. I do not expect a Cyberpunk 2077 situation
 

Fredrik

Member
This was needed, sounds great and I can’t wait to see it.

Do I need to play through Halo 5 campaign to get what’s going on? I’ve only played through Halo 4.
 

Clintizzle

Lord of Edge.
I think we assumed the recent tweet from Geoff Keilghy to Timdog was about Halo news right? did this not happen?
 

YukiOnna

Member
This was needed, sounds great and I can’t wait to see it.

Do I need to play through Halo 5 campaign to get what’s going on? I’ve only played through Halo 4.
It's not that long so I'd go through it. Considering they are referencing the Cortana plotline then yeah best to have context.
 

Havoc2049

Member
All the Sony fanboys warriors are having "Halo Killer", Killzone and Haze PTSD flashbacks, especially now that Joe Staten is back and large and in charge.
 

MrFunSocks

Banned
This is exactly my feeling as well. With Staten on board I'm actually less worried about the single-player. I do have to say though, that not having the co-op campaign shows you that they are still behind where they should be for a game that was supposed to launch a full year ago. I do think multiplayer and campaign will probably come out pretty polished. I do not expect a Cyberpunk 2077 situation
I’d wager that the graphical upgrades that have happened in the last year are the cause for removing the co op at launch. The co op likely started running like crap with the revised graphics etc so needs a few months of dedicated work to get it hitting 60fps again.
 

oldergamer

Member
I feel like all the concern about the campaign is the same as all the fake concern about not seeing gameplay on series x games long before the console launch. It all amounted to nothing, because we knew games were playable on it and releasing because there weren’t developers cancelling and delaying games for it left right and centre, and straight up telling us that the hardware didn’t work.

Halo Infinite has some people “shook”, and the FUD and concern campaigns are well underway. The day the release date got announced we had people saying they still believe it will be delayed ffs lol. Now we have people saying they’re scared to show it cause it’s a mess etc. Do people really think that after delaying the game an entire year they’d release it as a buggy mess? What sense does that make?

It’s pathetic. The games going to release, and those concerned people aren’t going to buy it because they never were going to in the first place.
This!

Fully agree.
 

Andodalf

Banned
I don't mind waiting, but the longer 343i wait to show that they've actually improved the campaign, the more disconnected the fanbase is going to grow. The tech preview showed us 343i have made improvements, but the Campaign was a disaster the last time we saw it and that's the part Halo fans - like me - need some reassuring on. At this point, I suspect dropping similar generic combat encounter footage with better visuals just isn't going to cut it. The silence on the campaign tells me 343i is more than aware of that - which is actually a good thing. I'd argue they need to deliver a Halo 2 E3 calibre showing to win over the sceptics, but, realistically, they just need to deliver something that makes people excited for the tale they want to tell. "Believe". "Finish the Fight". Hell, even "Hunt the Truth" was exciting... except that they didn't actually deliver that last one. Fingers crossed they deliver something before the campaign actually releases - because if they basically stealth drop a Halo campaign, that's as good as 343i admitting they done fucked another one.

Halo 2 famously had a fake E3 showing lol. All that matters is that the game is good. It’s 3 months away. We can wait and see. Marketing isn’t worth shit, as we saw with H5 campaign.
 

anthony2690

Banned
The tech preview showed us 343i have made improvements, but the Campaign was a disaster the last time we saw it and that's the part Halo fans - like me - need some reassuring on.



Was it really a disaster though? I mean 85% likes and 15% dislikes roughly.

I think the general consensus is, most people were happy with what they saw, could the game look better visually? Definitely.

I think most the hate was the minority on social media parroting the same Craig meme.

But I'm happy they delayed the game to deliver extra polish etc :)

But I don't think the showing was a disaster.
 
Man, I don't buy it. There are different teams that handle different things.. like you know, a marketing team to cook up some gameplay.. I don't think they're confident in the campaign TBH. But hey, at least it's on gamepass and the multiplayer is free to play.. but i'd lower expectations

I don't think it's that simple. There's likely performance optimization work that would need to go into getting performance where they want it with the quality level they want. There's maybe AI related things that are simply not working like they want, maybe they're still having some issues with their texture streaming solution. They've never had a Halo world like this before, so how AI will behave, how combat encounters could work, how the world behaves.
 

Hobbygaming

has been asked to post in 'Grounded' mode.
Do people really think that after delaying the game an entire year they’d release it as a buggy mess? What sense does that mak
I'm not saying it will be buggy but they did just say they're currently working on fixing bugs and they have a little more than 2 months to get the game on to the gold masters ready to ship

It's not in any way guaranteed to be super polished
 
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Was it really a disaster though? I mean 85% likes and 15% dislikes roughly.

I think the general consensus is, most people were happy with what they saw, could the game look better visually? Definitely.

I think most the hate was the minority on social media parroting the same Craig meme.

But I'm happy they delayed the game to deliver extra polish etc :)

But I don't think the showing was a disaster.

You think they delayed the game 1 year for "extra polish"?
................................

Wow
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
I really, really hope that it lands and is just a brilliant campaign. I know there are a hell of a lot of people who are praying for halo to fail but don't we ultimately want there to be a great game to play this holiday season and what better than it to be an amazing halo campaign after 6 years of waiting.

I'm so ready for this to be top tier. Please don't let me down 343i Joe and Microsoft.
 
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Caio

Member
I'm confident 343i with one extra year of devlopment managed to enhance the Game on High End PC and XSX. I'm happy they are testing the Game, playing the Game to death and make it polish as much as they can. I want to ba a believer, I want to believe This Halo will bring me back to the series. My fingers are crossed.
 
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Andodalf

Banned


Was it really a disaster though? I mean 85% likes and 15% dislikes roughly.

I think the general consensus is, most people were happy with what they saw, could the game look better visually? Definitely.

I think most the hate was the minority on social media parroting the same Craig meme.

But I'm happy they delayed the game to deliver extra polish etc :)

But I don't think the showing was a disaster.


Yeah gameplay wise everything has looked great, and the story seems to be off to a better start than where 5 left off.
 

YukiOnna

Member
I'm not saying it will be buggy but they did just say they're currently working on fixing bugs and they have a little more than 2 months to get the game on to the gold masters ready to ship

It's not in any way guaranteed to be super polished
Sure, but this is the standard time for polishing. It always happens before the game goes gold so they'd have been in on it for a couple of months now. It doesn't exactly excuse the lack of PR material, but I'd like to think they are just focusing on getting the game in a good place than building material for promotion since they had a extra year and leadership change. It sounds like they are almost done anyway.
 

Kev Kev

Member
cant they just release 1-2 minute video of someone playing the campaign? or 5 minutes? they dont have to make it super fancy, just show us that the fucking plane isnt in the process of a flaming crash landing lol
 
This was needed, sounds great and I can’t wait to see it.

Do I need to play through Halo 5 campaign to get what’s going on? I’ve only played through Halo 4.
Don't play Halo 5 full stop it's really not worth (campaign I'm talking about). Halo Wars 2 is the best bet in terms of story leading up to Infinite, I think.
 

McCheese

Member
Didn't they submit 10 minutes of new gameplay footage to be eligible for the Gamescom awards?

"We would show you the game but we're far too busy polishing it to be even more awesome and don't have time"

Surejan.gif
 
Didn't they submit 10 minutes of new gameplay footage to be eligible for the Gamescom awards?

"We would show you the game but we're far too busy polishing it to be even more awesome and don't have time"

Surejan.gif

They're still working from home mostly I suspect, that can't be easy.
 

Mr.ODST

Member
You either bug fix or see yourself become Cyberpunk 2077

On a serious not always liked Joe Statens work, he was brought on for a reason and if he doesnt like something he will make sure it gets fixed or changed, the MP flight played and felt great and that was only against bots (apart from teh short period of pvp)

Working in industry previously bug fixing takes a ton of time as most of the time when you fix one thing it breaks another, rinse and repeat, if he can 100% complete the campaign with all side missions thats a good sign the game is pretty much there.
 


Was it really a disaster though? I mean 85% likes and 15% dislikes roughly.

I think the general consensus is, most people were happy with what they saw, could the game look better visually? Definitely.

I think most the hate was the minority on social media parroting the same Craig meme.

But I'm happy they delayed the game to deliver extra polish etc :)

But I don't think the showing was a disaster.


Neither did I personally. Even in this showing there's so much that I appreciated.
 
Honestly I can't wait to play this game. I know that I'm going to enjoy it. All the things that people are worked up about are things that can and will be fixed.

Bugs will be fixed. Missing content will be filled. Additional content will be added. 343 has a history of bad launches but they also have an excellent track record of making sure they deliver everything they promised in the end. They don't have a history of backtracking on promised content post-release.

Also, 343 seem to be taking fan feedback a lot more seriously. So, who knows exactly what will be in the game once it launches. I hope that we will be able to get experience and battle pass stuff simply by playing matches. I don't mind the current state of the TMCC seasons with the exception of not getting any more points for leveling beyond a certain level. I think a point should be rewarded every time a player levels. If 343 can make that adjustment I'd be totally fine with the system they mentioned for Infinite.
 
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MrFunSocks

Banned
I'm not saying it will be buggy but they did just say they're currently working on fixing bugs and they have a little more than 2 months to get the game on to the gold masters ready to ship

It's not in any way guaranteed to be super polished
Bug fixing happens at the end. That’s how software development works. They also have until release day to finish the day 1 patch, which there will be. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.
 

RGB'D

Member
The longer they wait the more they put pressure on themselves. People are already spouting the “next Cyberpunk 2077 “ stuff and we know , given the memes and last years negative response, there will be folks waiting to shit on it.
That doesn't matter as long as they deliver. Halo haters and Sony console warriors are going to crush it no matter what. But for the majority of the people, as long as it is good is all that matters.

Edit:To be clear no one will remember the troubled development or the "Cyberpunk" vibes. If they fail then it didn't matter anyways.
 
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II_JumPeR_I

Member
You know on my ps5, I can record a few mins of gameplay and upload it to YouTube. Can he not do this on Xbox? I have a XSX, but been waiting to for this game to use it. So not sure if it has gameplay upload ability. Maybe it’s hard?
Xbox devkits have a record function hell they could even use the pc version...
A Studio with a competent media team could just record some gameplay/cutscenes and cut a trailer together..
The reasoning not showing anything is BS
 
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