Highlights
- Lack of content at launch limited Halo Infinite's full potential, especially in multiplayer, with the absence of Forge being a major downside.
- Forge mode was added a year post-launch, allowing players to create maps and game modes, revitalizing the game and providing a deeper experience.
- Squad Battles, a community-made playlist using Forge, has become incredibly popular, recreating classic multiplayer gameplay and offering iconic maps for nostalgic fans.
It is no secret that the state in which Halo Infinite launched limited the full potential of what the game could have achieved. While the ambitious campaign of the title was relatively well-received by fans, its multiplayer faced a lot of criticism over an alleged lack of content, including the abscence of some of Halo's most defining online modes such as Forge.
Halo Infinite also launched without the ability to play its campaign co-operatively online, with this feature being added much later on in the game's life-cycle. Forge was also eventually added to the game quite a while after launch, and thankfully, the wait was worth it. The amount of content such as maps and playlists that the mode has already provided has made Halo Infinite a much more engaging experience.
Halo Infinite's Deep Need For a Forge Mode
Forge was not added to Halo Infinite until November 2022, with players having to wait almost an entire year post-launch to enjoy a mode that had typified so much of the past Halo experience. Even this November inclusion was just a beta for Forge, with players quickly racking up over 1,000,000 creations in the beta-phase just two months after it was made available.
First added in Halo 3, Forge gives players the full creative ability to showcase their own created maps and even game modes using a wide range of Halo assets. Some of the most defining Halo modes like Infection and Grifball found life as Forge creations, showcasing the community-driven power that the mode has always possessed.
This creativity has carried over to the community of Halo Infinite, who quickly began flooding the game with near-endless amounts of content. When considering that the biggest issue Infinite faced at launch was the emptiness of its multiplayer offerings, it is difficult to overstate just how beneficial Forge has been in making the release a much deeper experience.
The Benefits of Halo Infinite's Forge: Squad Battles
The inclusion of Forge in Halo Infinite has seen an explosion in popularity for Squad Battles, with this being the best way to showcase how Forge has improved the game so much. Squad Battles was introduced as a community-made playlist in July of this year, with many now considering it to be the main source of Infinite's recent revival in popularity and public opinion.
At its core, Squad Battles is aiming to recreate the classic Halo multiplayer gameplay of Big Team Battle playlists, pitting players against each other in 8v8 combat. Before this, Halo Infinite only offered 12v12 gameplay via Big Team Battles, and 4v4 in its standard playlists. Squad Battles provide the perfect middle-ground between these two modes, while massively appealing to the nostalgia of veteran fans who fondly look back upon 8v8 experiences.
Crucially, through Forge Squad Battles is populated by a map roster that boasts a lot of one-to-one recreations of classic Halo maps, with many being taken from Halo 3. Offering Capture The Flag, Slayer, and King of the Hill, Squad Battles includes remakes of iconic maps like Last Resort, Rats Nest, and Valhalla.
More classic maps are being periodically added to the playlist, offering a huge amount of replayability and consistent excitement surrounding Squad Battles and Halo Infinite as a whole. By doing away with Infinite's content problem and allowing fans to recreate the gameplay framework of past titles, it is clear to see how Forge has improved the release.
Halo Infinite is available now on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.