Despite some early promises, Halo Infinite will not have campaign co-op at launch — nor will it have Forge mode. In a lengthy development update video, Halo Infinite‘s head of creative, Joseph Staten, mentioned that the highly anticipated game is launching without those major features. This is likely the result of a shift in priorities following its delay. In a report by GamesRadar in July last year, developer 343 Interactive’s prior studio head, Chris Lee, said the game would have co-op at launch. But no longer.
Forge and co-op will instead release in later seasons. According to Staten, campaign co-op will be implemented in Halo Infinite season 2, whereas Forge will arrive in season 3. To put that in perspective, Halo Infinite‘s seasons are going to be three months in length. The game will release with its first season underway, which will be themed around Reach. Naturally, this means that the game won’t have campaign co-op for three months, and Forge will be jailed for at least half a year.
That’s a bummer, especially when you realize that campaign co-op has been a Halo staple since the very beginning. Another feature that will miss the launch window for Halo Infinite on PC is split-screen multiplayer — it’ll be there for console owners. While it’s likely that most PC users weren’t planning on playing split screen with their smaller monitors, it’s still another feature skipping release. You can check out the entire development update, including with the interview with Staten, below (it starts at around 11:54):
The results of the Halo Infinite technical preview
Before Staten’s interview, 343 staff sat down to discuss the results of the game’s first technical preview. In sum, the team got a lot of positive feedback from players. Once they sorted the initial issues out, players completed more than 1 million bot matches, and supplied “thousands of support tickets.”
According to Sam Hanshaw, producer of live operations on Halo Infinite, those tickets and the preview have yielded fruit. For one, the game will have improved loading times. The tech team also spotted a “misconfiguration” in the game’s executable, which dropped performance by about 20%. That’s now been fixed, and Hanshaw expects people will notice a 20% improvement with the next preview. It’s good news, considering our thoughts on the game’s early performance.
There’s a lot more to the update video, which lasts more than 28 minutes.
