The expectations surrounding Halo Infinite prior to its launch were massive, with the release being one of the most talked-about titles that the franchise had seen in a long time. Unfortunately, the 2021 release of the game sadly fell flat in comparison to this hype.
While many aspects of Halo Infinite were well-received by fans, the game as a whole developed a lackluster reputation quickly after launch, with many citing an alleged lack of content within the title. With certain elements of Infinite seemingly having a lot more passion behind them than others, it is clear that the effort across different game modes was not uniform. That said, there are comparable industry titles that deal with a wide breadth of content much better than Halo Infinite, and one aspect of the Call of Duty: Warzone model could have been utilized by 343 Industries to produce a much more stable title, that being how the content was handled behind the scenes.
The Missteps of Halo Infinite
Upon Halo Infinite's release, many fans quickly flocked to the single-player narrative of the title, which promised to be one of the most ambitious experiences that Halo had ever curated. Unlike usual franchise installments, Halo Infinite's story involved a sizable open world, allowing the player to tackle side content, bounties, and main missions at their own pace and often in their own order. A single team was in charge of both the multiplayer and single-player modes of Halo Infinite, being solely responsible for a ton of content.
Many were also excited to finally re-experience Master Chief as a sole dedicated protagonist, with recent Halo installments controversially moving away from the iconic Spartan. While this campaign was considered interesting and layered, many were quick to develop scathing opinions of the game's multiplayer. Launching with a small range of maps, very few game modes, and even without a Forge mode, players quickly exhausted the offered content of Halo Infinite's multiplayer and lambasted the lack of replayability or progression that the mode possessed. Between post-launch needs for tweaks to its campaign and a huge bolstering of multiplayer content, it's clear to see why so much strain was placed on the single team behind Halo Infinite.
How Warzone's Approach Would Have Benefited Halo Infinite
The Call of Duty: Warzone subfranchise began in 2020, with the CoD IP boldly stepping into the saturated world of battle royale shooters. Despite the saturation of this particular market, Warzone would go on to be a massive success, recently receiving its own sequel to play alongside 2022's Modern Warfare 2.
Unlike Halo Infinite, CoD: Warzone possesses its own dedicated team that works away from the team that develops the single-player of the Modern Warfare series. Crucially, this allows Warzone to be ambitious, while receiving the necessary amount of time and resources to produce well-received and polished content which otherwise may be rushed and lackluster. As well as this, this clear delegation of workload works to the benefit of the mainline Modern Warfare games, which gain from not having to focus time away from their own experiences to work on Warzone.
This Warzone team is also working on the core multiplayer of the MW franchise, with the scale and involved content of these combined ventures being larger than what workload Halo Infinite's multiplayer potentially required. It makes sense in this way that Halo Infinite could have benefited greatly from separate teams working individually on single-player and multiplayer content for the game, especially given how successful this formula has been for the comparable Warzone franchise. While this would not completely absolve the Halo game of its pitfalls, a smarter delegation of workload could have led to a much greater level of consistency.
Halo Infinite is available now on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.