It’s a rare day in video game land when fans ask for a bunch of stuff from a live service game and then… actually get it. But that’s exactly what happened today, when developer 343 Industries rolled out a ton of community-requested features for its free-to-play multiplayer shooter Halo Infinity.
Hello Infinity, which was first released last year, has had a slightly rough life cycle. Like many free-to-play shooters, Halo Infinity is based on a seasonal model. Initially planned to run for three months, so far the seasons have operated on six-month cycles. (We’re running through the second season, which is set to run until early November.) Fans say it has deprived the shooter of essential content—like maps, mods, and cosmetics—as much as it should. preventing you from feeling as fresh as possible. ,
The shooter is also structured around the rollout of weekly challenges. Completing your challenges earns you XP, which levels up your Battle Pass, giving you new cosmetic options with each level. Previously, you could only check your active challenges while inactive in the lobby between matches. After today’s update you can watch them in the middle of the match. However, there’s a catch: Challenges don’t track progress in real time, so you won’t really know if you’ve landed those five headshots or whatever until the match is over. But hey, progress!
Today’s update also marks Halo Infinity’s first step toward “cross-core customization,” or the ability to use all customization options on all “armor cores.” Instead of one set of armor for your avatar, a 26th century supersoldier, you have five so-called armor “cores”. Each one has a different look; You can customize them as you see fit.
But cosmetic choices—from accessories to armor parts to even various color options—are tied exclusively to each core. For example, you can’t use any paint from the actual Crayola box of Mark VII cores of armor coatings on the core, which doesn’t have solid substitutes (looking right at you, Mark V [b]).
Now, as of today’s update, all visors work with all Armor Corps; They will appear automatically for all five of your cores. Unless I’m missing it, though, the armory doesn’t indicate which armor core the visor was initially attached to. And since some are more or less the same—like Yoroi Core’s dark blue tempered steel and Monster Core’s dark blue tempered steel—you have a handful of visor options that look like duplicates. (Your regular reminder that you can hold the Y button to compare any cosmetic options you’ve currently equipped with.) But hey, again: progress!
He is not everything. Later in the month, Hello Infinity will receive competitive and social versions of the beloved Team Doubles playlist, in which the two teams face off on smaller maps. (These are currently scheduled for August 23, but 343 hasn’t always hit the target dates for Infinite’s update.) But 343 quietly changed the Team Snipers playlist today, rolling out an update that’s officially announced. I was not, only on social media drawing attention to it.
Since the rollout of the Team Snipers playlist earlier this summer, it has a mode that starts you off with a stalker rifle—a very good precision weapon… that’s not even a sniper rifle. After today, that mode is gone, replaced by a mod that only spawns you with snipers.
Shotty Snipes, in which you start with one sniper and one shotgun, is still there, thankfully. Sadly, the brute snipes mode hasn’t been purged, although at least the early weapon, the dagger, is technically a sniper rifle. Sorry, there’s no word yet on whether Halo Infinite will get the mod with a shock rifle only. But hey, one last time: Progress!
Sure, personally, these are all small changes. But taken together, it’s a sign of a game that slowly wants to adapt to players – Halo: The Master Chief Collection preceded it. Soon, we’ll all wake up and realize that even Halo Infinity has legitimately grown into a live service game.