First Multiplayer Footage For Halo Infinite Revealed, Plus Plenty Of Details

Dur­ing the Xbox and Bethes­da Show­case, Microsoft final­ly revealed Halo Infinite’s mul­ti­play­er and re-con­firmed the game is launch­ing this holiday. 

Mul­ti­play­er will sup­port up to 120fps, which was pre­vi­ous­ly unknown. Microsoft also con­firmed that both the free-to-play mul­ti­play­er and cam­paign will launch at the same time this com­ing hol­i­day sea­son. How­ev­er, no offi­cial release date was announced dur­ing the presentation.

A blog post on Halo Way­point also con­tains a ton of new details and images for Halo Infinite’s mul­ti­play­er. You can check out a roundup of the info below.

Beta Tests Upcoming

343 will be offer­ing beta test for Halo Infi­nite begin­ning this sum­mer. They will invite a select num­ber of peo­ple to a “lim­it­ed pre-release tech­ni­cal pre­view” for the game, with the goal of the stress test­ing to put the mul­ti­play­er in a good place for launch. You can reg­is­ter with the free Halo Insid­er pro­gram to enter for a chance to get in.

Imperfections Are A Possibility

343 acknowl­edged that Halo Infinite’s mul­ti­play­er is a live ser­vice, so if things don’t func­tion at launch, play­ers should expect updates and improve­ments overtime.

“We know the expec­ta­tions and stakes are high and we may not get every­thing exact­ly to every­one’s lik­ing on day one, but as a live ser­vice we’re com­mit­ted to part­ner­ing with play­ers to evolve the game togeth­er,” 343 said. “With a free-to-play ser­vice sup­port­ing cross­play on Xbox and PC, along with a more invit­ing new play­er expe­ri­ence, we’re rolling out the red car­pet for more play­ers than ever before to jump in and share in this uni­verse and these expe­ri­ences we’ve all come to know and love for near­ly twen­ty years. We’re as eager and excit­ed as you are to begin the next chap­ter of this jour­ney togeth­er this holiday.”

Classic Equipment

For Halo Infi­nite, 343 says it’s  “embrac­ing the fran­chise’s lega­cy while imbu­ing it with new mod­ern twists” which play to the game’s strengths. How­ev­er, they also want to lay ground­work on which they can grow and evolve the game in future.

“In addi­tion to return­ing favorites and brand-new weapons, Halo Infinite’s sand­box is punc­tu­at­ed by the addi­tion of Halo 3‑esque equipment–game-changing lim­it­ed-use abil­i­ties that play­ers will scav­enge for dur­ing a match,” 343 said. “In today’s trail­er you’ll catch the first glimpse of two addi­tion­al pieces of equip­ment: the Threat Sen­sor is an area-of-effect sup­port device that peri­od­i­cal­ly puls­es and illu­mi­nates ene­my play­ers with­in it’s radius while the apt­ly named Repul­sor can be used to deflect pro­jec­tiles and any­thing else that gets in the way. Whether it’s zip­ping across a map to gain the high ground using a Grap­pleshot or dig­ging in your defens­es with a Drop Wall, equip­ment brings new strate­gic and tac­ti­cal options to Halo Infinite’s fre­net­ic mul­ti­play­er com­bat with more addi­tions to come in future sea­son­al updates.”

Vehicles

There will be an “assort­ment of tried-and-true UNSC clas­sics” with­in the game, along with new vehi­cles inspired by the Ban­ished ene­mies. Many of these new vehi­cles will sup­port Halo Infinite’s new cus­tomiza­tion systems.

New Tutorial System

To famil­iar­ize play­ers with what 343 describes as a daunt­ing expe­ri­ence,” the devel­op­er says Halo Infi­nite mul­ti­play­er will be the “most approach­able and wel­com­ing” in the entire series. So they cre­at­ed a new tuto­r­i­al sys­tem called the Academy.

“Under the men­tor­ship of Spar­tan Com­man­der Lau­rette, the Acad­e­my offers play­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to hone their skills and get bet­ter accli­mat­ed with the arma­ments and envi­ron­ments of Halo Infi­nite,” 343 said. “Recruits will be able to dial-in their marks­man­ship skills at the tar­get range or jump right into cus­tomiz­able train­ing skir­mish­es and square off against AI-con­trolled bots. Train­ing Mode lets you con­fig­ure spe­cif­ic load­outs, deploy oppo­nent bots of var­i­ous skill lev­els, and prac­tice on your own terms. Bots can also be con­fig­ured in Cus­tom Games to tai­lor the expe­ri­ence and even in fill-in ros­ter spots for MIA fireteam members.”

“With new train­ing options, bots to spar against, skill-based-match­mak­ing, and improved sys­tems that deliv­er bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion of key info to play­ers dur­ing a match, we’re excit­ed to wel­come Spar­tans of all skill lev­els and help you bat­tle your way to the top each season.”

Maps and Modes

Halo’s clas­sic Are­na is mak­ing a come­back in Halo Infi­nite. This is where two teams of four Spar­tans face off, and mul­ti­play­er announc­er Jeff Steitzer is return­ing to announce all the fun. 343 also con­firmed that Big Team Bat­tle is also com­ing back, which fea­tures 12v12 mul­ti­play­er on big maps will loads of vehicles.

“Com­man­der Lau­rette” will pro­vide “tac­ti­cal updates” dur­ing BTB match­es. Plus, Pel­i­cans will be drop­ping new vehi­cles, weapon ord­nances free-fall from the sky, and 343 stat­ed Big Team Bat­tle will be a wild, rau­cous, fun social expe­ri­ence that cranks every­thing up to 11.”

Halo Infi­nite will also have Ranked and Social playlists, with lim­it­ed-time sea­son­al events planned as well. Cross-play between PC and con­sole is sup­port­ed as well, along with cross-pro­gres­sion so you can move to a new plat­form is you want. Split-screen and LAN on PC are also sup­port­ed modes.

Customization

343 says a “key com­po­nent” of Halo Infinite’s mul­ti­play­er is per­son­al­iza­tion. This will change with each new sea­son of con­tent, which can be pur­chased with real mon­ey or unlocked through game­play. 343 spec­i­fied that there will be no loot box­es, and every­thing is strict­ly cosmetic. 

“Each sea­son will fea­ture a new assort­ment of cus­tomiza­tion pieces and com­po­nents that can be earned via game­play, chal­lenges, events, and pur­chase. We’ve said this before, but it bears say­ing again–there will be no loot box­es or ele­ments of chance if you decide to pur­chase an option­al cus­tomiza­tion item,” 343 said. “And, of course, all of Halo Infinite’s Spar­tan cus­tomiza­tion ele­ments are pure­ly cos­met­ic and have no impact to gameplay.”

This con­tent will be offered through the Armor Hall, which has more per-piece cus­tomiza­tion options than any pri­or Halo game.” This includes visors, gloves, shoul­der pads, and helmets–among oth­er items. 

Friend and Foe

A new sys­tem called “friend and foe” is head­ing to Halo Infi­nite mul­ti­play­er, which 343 describes as such:

“At a high lev­el, this func­tions as an ‘out­line’ sys­tem that uses dif­fer­ent col­ors to denote friends and foes. These col­ors are con­fig­urable for acces­si­bil­i­ty pur­pos­es and what­ev­er col­ors you assign will match your score­board, team bases, and team flags. This isn’t depict­ed in the reveal trail­er, due to its more cin­e­mat­ic nature, but we’ll have more details to share down the road (and Halo Insid­ers will be able to check it out first-hand dur­ing tech­ni­cal pre­views lat­er this summer).”

More To Come

343 will share more details on Halo Infinite’s mul­ti­play­er tomor­row, June 14th, at 8:00 a.m. PT via a trail­er on the Halo YouTube chan­nel. On June 16th, anoth­er Canon Fod­der blog post from the stu­dio will explain some of the fic­tion behind the maps, vehi­cles, and armor. Last­ly, on June 24th, there will be a new Inside Infi­nite blog post that will deep dive into Halo Infinite’s multiplayer.