This morning, Xbox’s 343 Industries released a new trailer highlighting the campaign of its latest game, Halo: Infinite.
The new story trailer for Halo: Infinite shows the classic first-person combat of the Halo series, with some added new gameplay features including an open-world map. The story picks up from the end of Halo 5: Guardians, though an indeterminate amount of time has passed since that game. The trailer states that Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 and Cortana saving the galaxy is “a distant memory.” The trailer goes on to say that the members of the human race are (once again) on their last legs, fighting back against something called “The Banished” (who look a lot like Brutes), along familiar and new types of Covenant aliens, fighting on the mysterious Zeta Halo. The Arbiter (voiced in the past by Keith David) is, unfortunately, nowhere to be seen (yet).
Halo: Infinite will continue to focus on Spartan super-soldier Master Chief chasing his old AI girlfriend Cortana, in the wake of the destruction wreaked by the Covenant, the Flood, the Forerunners, Covenant remnants, the conflict between John’s Spartan Fireteam Blue and Fireteam Osiris, and a bunch of revelations about the epic sci-fi history of the universe. Halo: Infinite also features a new AI codenamed “The Weapon” that was created to “lock down” Cortana, though this new electro-light lady does not know why she has been given this task.
Halo: Infinite will be the 14th Halo game overall, and the sixth in the main series—it’s had a number of spin-offs and mobile games. It will also be the second of the first-person shooters to be rated T instead of M, after Guardians. Most notably, Halo: Infinite will be the first open-world Halo game. The trailer shows a sort of conquest/liberation map that will allow freedom of movement with knocking out objectives. There also appears to be an RPG-like skill and gear upgrade system. Too bad split screen has gone the way of the dodo.
The game will also, graciously, be available on Game Pass on its release day, Dec. 8, 2021. Last Thursday, 343 also released an Official PC Overview Video about the technical tools and options on the day-one simultaneous PC release of the game.