The crown jewel of Microsoft, Halo Infinite, got its first official gameplay reveal today at the Xbox Games Showcase. Starting off with a cinematic trailer that shows the forging of the Spartan Mjolnir armor. This cinematic trailer was followed immediately by almost 9 minutes of gameplay straight from the demo where it shows off the new open world and a brand new grappling hook mechanic that can send the Chief flying towards enemies or up terrain.
Showing the start menu of the demo was a great way to show people that this is actual gameplay for Halo Infinite. After disembarking a downed ship and leaving behind his comedy sidekick from the previous trailer, the Chief quickly gets to work. We get to see a map pulled up, showing off the open-world layout of the game.
Swinging around like a Spider-Chief
The gameplay looks exactly the way you expect it to be. The Chief takes out some grunts, hops in a Warthog, and moves to a different location to take out more Covenant with a bevy of assorted weapons. This is where the grappling hook is shown off for the first time as well, as the Chief hooks onto an Elite and zips towards him to deal dagame, in a manner very similar to Doom Eternal. After clearing this area, Chief zips up like Batman to a higher elevation using the grappling hook.
The hook offers a lot of possibilities for unique gameplay and combat mechanics that we haven’t seen in a Halo title previously. The rest of the demo is so quintessentially Halo, and that is good as it convinces old fans of the franchise that they have done the series justice. But I also think we need to see more of these new elements like the grappling hook to separate Infinite from the other Halo titles.
We also didn’t get any information on the multiplayer elements coming to Halo Infinite. I suspect we will see some information on that when the next Xbox Games Showcase comes to pass, whenever that will be.
