Game News Halo Infinite: The map needed to be much more ambitious! The developers confide
Published on 02/08/2022 at 21:05
After being long desired, Halo Infinite came to conquer the hearts of players last year with a successful proposal that borrows heavily from the open-world genre. Moreover, today, we learn that the Solo mode map should have been much larger.
Towards a more ambitious Halo Infinite
When Halo Infinite came out at the end of last year, it surprised everyone. Unlike previous games in the franchise, this new FPS from Microsoft and 343 Industries has innovated by allowing players to wander around a gigantic map where they can move freely. Moreover, we learn today through Joseph Staten, the creative director, that this famous card might have been quite different.
It was during a podcast by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences’ Game Maker’s Notebook that Joseph Staten confessed that the game map had to be much more varied, but that the development team unfortunately had to make some concessions due to lack of time.
Long before I arrived, and even following, the team had to make many changes to the scope and variety of biomes. (…) We made enormous progress between the E3 demo and the release of the game, but we still had to make concessions. In the end, we didn’t cut much in the open world, but I know from the initial designs that there was a pretty significant reduction in what the team was hoping to achieve. Joseph Staten, creative director at 343 Industries
Joseph Staten specifies at the same time that it was extremely difficult for 343 Industries to set up an open-world, since the studio was far from being accustomed to this kind of exercise.
I think anyone who’s tried to make an open-world game knows that you don’t get it 100% right the first time. We build ourselves over time, we even improve, we superimpose systems on previous learning. (…) So we had to, to really deliver a quality experience, stretch our ambitions to make sure that the things we put in place met expectations. Joseph Staten
No hunting so as not to damage the reputation of the Master Chief
However, where Joseph Staten is truly proud of the work done is that the team and himself did not fall into the trap of carrying out a profusion of side quests and filling targets. In particular, he takes the example of the hunting missions which were immediately swept away by 343 Industries so as not to go once morest the character of the Master Chief.
The Master Chief doesn’t need to kill animals to make leather shirts. He’s a massively armored super-soldier, and if he wants something, he kills him to get his gun. Joseph Staten