343 Industries has created a world in which Halo-style firefights occur organically, sometimes at a busy crossroads and sometimes in the middle of the woods.
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Halo is not the first series whose developers have introduced an open-world structure later in its life cycle - Gears 5 and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End also come to mind - but it is the most successful. In one case, I used a sniper rifle I discovered on a nearby cliffside, right next to a voice log from the Marine that, presumably, died there.
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Sometimes, I decided to drive a Razorback full of specialized Marines straight through the front door. As I mentioned in my preview last month, there’s a litany of ways to approach these encounters. One of the more repetitive side tasks involves clearing Forward Operating Bases (FOBs), which are small hubs stocked with resources and collectibles. (And please, do so: Banished propaganda towers are basically speakers that emit, essentially, a Grunt podcast centered around how terrible humans are, and it’s extremely funny.) When moving between mainline missions, there’s plenty to stumble upon - trapped Marines to rescue, propaganda towers to destroy, high-value targets to take out - and it all encourages you to take the scenic route. Though Halo Infinite still tells a linear story, the structure of its world allows for exploration.
Halo is aiming to carve out its own space in the modern landscape The Pilot and the Weapon are important prisms through which Infinite interrogates, and reconsiders, the myth of the Master Chief. The Weapon, unfamiliar with the legacy of the Chief, is curious and skeptical: Who is this person, and why has humanity come to revere him? Master Chief is typically the savior or the demon, depending on who you ask. The Pilot is well versed in the myth of the Master Chief and, like us, can get exasperated when the hero retreads the same habits he has countless times before. While well-rounded characters in their own rights, the Pilot and the Weapon serve as audience surrogates in two drastically different ways. There are so many plot threads to pull on here (many of them from the real-time strategy spinoff Halo Wars 2) that even devout Halo fans may find themselves confused.Īccompanying Chief on this journey are the Pilot - a UNSC survivor of the Banished attack that exiled the Chief - and the Weapon, an AI created to mimic Cortana and, ultimately, destroy her. 343 Industries has said that Halo Infinite is a good place for Halo newcomers to start, but that’s not entirely true. Halo Infinite’s main thrust is in regaining control over Zeta Halo, figuring out what happened to Cortana, and stopping the Banished from whatever bad thing they’re doing. The Banished, a group of exiled Covenant followers, have defeated the United Nations Space Command and gained control of Zeta Halo, the big ol’ ring that the UNSC Infinity slipspace-jumped to when escaping Cortana at the end of Halo 5: Guardians. Halo Infinite begins with Master Chief doing something he hasn’t done much before: losing. If you want to see the very best of the best for your platform(s) of choice, check out Polygon Essentials. When we award a game the Polygon Recommends badge, it’s because we believe the title is uniquely thought-provoking, entertaining, inventive, or fun - and worth fitting into your schedule. Polygon Recommends is our way of endorsing our favorite games. Halo Infinite is carrying a heavy legacy on its shoulders, and it’s doing so with confidence. It preserves the intensity of the series’ combat while also finding the magic in the act of exploration. Halo Infinite somehow feels entirely like Halo and entirely not, transplanting the franchise’s traditional linear narrative and mission structure into a semi-open world. For the first time in years, it feels like 343 knows where Halo is going. Halo Infinite is intended to be a course correction, described by 343 as a “spiritual reboot” of the franchise, that not only reexamines what makes something feel like Halo, but also finds ways to push those qualities further. It’s a legacy that developer 343 Industries has struggled to carry since taking over from Bungie, releasing two new games that felt like something of a decline from the series’ previous brilliance. In that time, the Halo series has become one of video games’ most iconic legacies, while Master Chief has become the symbol of Xbox - and console-based first-person shooters - as a whole.
It’s been more than 20 years since Master Chief - and Halo: Combat Evolved - debuted.
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