Halo Infinite hasn’t had the greatest development cycle so far. After fans had to wait 5 years for a new mainline Halo title, 343 Industries announced that Infinite needed another year in the oven and that it would not be releasing alongside the Xbox Series X last year.
Now things seem to be moving along steadily, with 343 Industries giving players a peek at the multiplayer experience a few weeks ago, and a release date set for sometime in the holiday season towards the end of the year, barring any further delays. There’s a slight catch, though. Halo Infinite will launch missing two franchise staples: Forge mode, and a co-op campaign.
Halo not so Infinite
The news comes via a development update video from the dev team over at 343 Industries, wherein the head of creative Joseph Staten explained that the two modes simply won’t be as ready as he and his team would like them to be.
“Unfortunately, as we focused the team for shutdown and really focused on a quality experience for launch, we made the really tough decision to delay shipping campaign co-op for launch. We also made the tough call to delay shipping Forge past launch as well,” he said.
Anyone who’s played a Halo campaign with a few friends knows just how much of a roaringly good time it is, and how integral it is to the core Halo experience. There’s nothing quite like facing off against the Covenant or holding back the Flood with a few of your buddies. Many fans would consider Forge, Halo’s custom multiplayer map-making mode similarly vital to the franchise.
“Our number one priority is: whatever we ship, whenever we ship it, it meets the right quality bar… and when we looked at these two experiences, campaign co-op and Forge, we made the determination they’re just not ready,” Staten went on to say.
They won’t be missing forever though. 343 Industries will release the modes as part of the game’s long-term road map, with campaign co-op arriving about 3 months after the initial launch, and Forge another 3 months after that. For a game that’s been plagued by delays already, that’s a lot of waiting for fans to endure. Hopefully, it pays off in the end.