'Halo: Infinite' Is The Best The Series Has Been Since 2010

Charles Raymo
Dec 15, 2021
7 min read

Updated: Dec 28, 2021

My relationship with the Halo series has been an interesting one. Beginning with a Halo 2 obsession in 2004 (I didn't have an Xbox when the first title came out), my love for the series bloomed, and didn't let up for well over six years as I played each new title exhaustively. I truly enjoyed everything about Halo; the visuals, the backstory (and books), the music, the gameplay. I own the art book for almost every game. I think you get the picture, I like Halo a lot.

As someone who likes Halo a lot, I was of course concerned when the reigns for the series got passed to 343 Industries, an offshoot of the original developer, Bungie, that was billed as being comprised of Halo veterans (although the accuracy of this has never really been clear, as it may have only been a couple of developers). While 343 came out of the gate reasonably strong with the perfectly good Halo 4, this was unfortunately followed by the infamous Halo 5: Guardians.

Between its confusing and lackluster story, wildly misleading marketing, and its further divergence from the classic look and feel of previous titles, Halo 5 felt incredibly out of place and is generally considered to be the worst of the mainline Halo titles. It was so disappointing, in fact, that I didn't really have much interest in the series continuing afterwards.

Imagine my surprise, then, when trailers for Halo: Infinite released and looked good. Not just good, but like classic Halo. Sure, there were some concerns over the visuals when the trailers first dropped (concerns that were, in my opinion, massively overblown. The game always looked good), but they were largely eclipsed by the fact that the game looked and played the way fans think Halo should. Gone were the hordes of generic, light-up robots that made up the enemies of 4 and 5, and the overly complicated, alien designs for the human characters in the game. It looked very clearly like a Halo game.

Well, I'm happy to report that Halo: Infinite is indeed a welcome return to form for the series. Let's break it down.

A few spoilers ahead, but I'll warn you before they hit.

Visuals:

First and foremost, this LOOKS like Halo. To understand how important the visuals are to this game, and how important art direction is to any game, let me show you a quick comparison.

This is what Halo 1 (remastered, but same art style) looked like:

A clearly defined enemy against a background that is pretty but not too busy. It's easy to tell what's going on in this shot, even if you're unfamiliar with Halo.

This is what your average combat encounter looked like in Halo 5:

Let's call this what it is: A visual mess. Your gun looks like your enemy, your teammate looks like your enemy, and your enemy looks like the (very busy) background. Everything is, for lack of a better term, overdesigned. As I'm sure you can imagine, this made the experience of playing Halo 5 something of a headache.

Compare this to the much more old-school (and frankly, more well designed) stylings of Halo Infinite:

Gosh, just look at that. Gorgeous. Your enemies and their vibrant colorings are perfectly recognizable, even against the richly detailed environment. Your weapon and reticle are clearly visible and you have an excellent sense of what you're shooting at and what's shooting back at you. This same visual process seems to have been applied to the look of characters as well:

On the left we have the Master Chief's armor from 4 and 5, and on the right is his updated look in Infinite. His design is brought back to its roots, forgoing the overly complicated armor and strange silhouette from the previous two titles for something much simpler and more clearly defined. "Bulky and utilitarian" is how the human aesthetic was defined in the Halo 3 art book, and this game brings that back in wonderful, modern graphics.

Gameplay:

Gameplay in Infinite is exactly what you'd hope to see from a new title in a long-running series: A style that honors the best of what's been done before, while throwing in a few new ideas to add some variety. The basic gunplay will be more-or-less familiar to you if you've played a Halo game before, but there are a few new twists thrown in that help to make Infinite feel like a completely fresh experience. 343 accomplishes this with two major changes:

1) Upgradeable Gadgets: Eschewing armor abilities for something a little more fun, 343 cleverly adds upgradeable gadgets to the game in the form of deployable shields, threat detectors, maneuvering thrusters, and my personal favorite, the grapple hook. These items don't break the game (the grapple gets close), but they bend the established rules enough to keep things fresh and give you new ways to approach every encounter. Being attacked by stealth enemies? Ping 'em with your threat detector for a nasty surprise. Pinned and out of ammo? Grapple a fresh gun or an explosive canister right to you. Brute commander charging you with a hammer that's bigger than you? Thrusters have your back. The gadgets add a lot of variety and the upgrades make you feel truly powerful.

2) Open World: Yes, Halo is open world now. I was worried that this would just add a lot of busy work to the game, but I'm going to have to eat crow on this one; the open world is great. Instead of using a system in which you must pick a specific mission and complete the length of it to experience some of your favorite moments, now you can just create great moments on the fly. Travel to the nearest marine outpost, grab your favorite weapon, load up your favorite vehicle with some of your marine buddies, and go pick a fight. Don't feel like fighting? Explore the beautiful Zeta Halo and find some fun easter eggs and cosmetic upgrades. I've thoroughly enjoyed spending my free time just finding fun things to try in the open world.

The "busy work" aspects also wound up being great fun. Liberating an outpost from The Banished is involved and challenging, and each outpost has it's own story and purpose. The high value targets all net you a fun weapon upgrade, and many are decently challenging experiences. Happening upon a squad of surrounded marines and breaking through enemy lines to rescue them makes you feel like you're living out a scene from the Halo book series.

Story/Characters (Slight Spoilers):

To preface this one for fans of the series: 343 has smartly decided to relegate most of the events that immediately follow Halo 5 to books and some memory fragments that pop up in game, as opposed to making us experience this rather unpopular storyline. Your mileage may vary here, but as someone who did not like where things went in Halo 5, I was happy with the way they ended up handling this.

Infinites story reminds us of what, besides gameplay, makes Halo so special: The characters. The opening cutscene of this game, alone, has more emotional weight to it than anything in the previous game, reminding us of exactly what these characters are fighting for and how dangerous their new enemy is. This game doesn't start as an epic, world-shattering journey across the galaxy with multiple armies colliding; we spend the first 10 or so minutes of the game with a lone pilot, stranded in his dropship after humanity is dealt a devastating blow by their enemy, the Banished, left with nothing to keep him going but a hologram of his wife and daughter. Likewise, while the game does culminate in a race to stop a galaxy-wide threat from emerging (so we have a proper new enemy for sequels), the penultimate battle of the game isn't for the galaxy, or a planet, or even for a particular group; it's to save one man.

343 also finally delivers on something that's been promised since Halo 4: Exploring the Chief's humanity. Unlike the previous two titles heavy handed and only slightly successful attempts, Infinite's more subtle approach presents a Master Chief who's more human than we've ever seen, but only if you're paying attention. As a man of few words, Chief's thoughts and feelings are mainly conveyed through body language; gingerly moving the body of a dead teammate (contrasted by shoving aside the bodies of dead enemies), resting his hand on the shoulder of a deceased fellow Spartan for an extra moment before moving on, hesitating to reach his hand out to his new AI partner because he's unsure if he can trust her, and putting up walls anytime Cortana is mentioned. It's these little moments that give us a much better idea of what's going on beneath the helmet.

We do interact quite a bit with the games antagonist, Escharum, and he's perfectly good, even if he is mostly just your average "I am very evil" villain. There's no groundbreaking interactions, no "I am a monument to all your sins" moment like in Halo 2 (damn that was some good dialogue), but Escharum has a great presence and does a good job of making you want to fight him, no doubt about that.

Of course, we should talk about the biggest new character: The Weapon. Our de facto Cortana replacement, Weapon is a fresh AI, unburdened by the knowledge and experiences that compromise other intelligences like her, and her bubbly, positive, confident attitude adds a nice lightness to much of the games proceedings. Her interactions with the Chief also bring about some of his most human moments. To make a bit of a leap, it's almost like seeing the Chief getting into a healthy relationship after his partnership with Cortana became toxic. Boy that's a weird analogy but...it also kinda fits.

Conclusion:

Halo Infinite is excellent, a true return to form for the series. Full of great character moments, thrilling combat, beautiful music, fun exploration, and the promise of more of these things to come, it's everything I could have hoped for from a modern Halo game. Complaints? Eh, the story is a little short for my liking, some combat encounters have sharp difficulty spikes, a few very rare glitches (which is surprising from AAA game studios in this day and age), but nothing I felt was worth knocking any points off. It's very good, and it's very Halo.

5/5, 343 has set the bar very high for themselves, I sure hope they can keep it up.