Halo Infinite was one of the biggest new game releases of 2021, earning widespread acclaim for both its free-to-player multiplayer experience as well as its premium single-player story campaign. A lot of praise has been directed to the Halo Infinite story in particular, with many fans enjoying Master Chief's long-awaited return. The Halo story is clearly far from over, but it seems that future stories will have to be guided by a different lead narrative designer.
Halo Infinite lead narrative designer Aaron Linde has confirmed that he is leaving 343 Industries. Linde confirmed the news on social media, saying that he is leaving the company in order to "pursue a new opportunity in 2022," though specifics on what exactly this opportunity is have not been revealed at the time of this writing. Linde spoke highly of his time at 343 Industries and described Halo Infinite as the best game he's ever worked on.
Linde's career started in 2008 when he started work as a community manager for Gears of War before working on story content for Gears of War 3 as a producer. Linde eventually made his way to Monolith Productions where he worked on Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and also spent a few years at Gearbox Software working on Battleborn. Linde would go on to work on popular games like Guild Wars 2 and Destiny 2 before finally making his way to 343 Industries in August of 2019 to work on Halo Infinite's story.
Part of Linde's work on Halo Infinite included creating over 15,000 lines of dialogue for Halo Infinite enemies and Marines. This aspect of Halo Infinite's single-player campaign has earned quite a bit of praise in particular, with many remarking on how funny the Grunt dialogue is in Infinite and how it all helps bring the open world of Zeta Halo to life. Linde also assisted in designing the well-received Propaganda Towers in Halo Infinite and obviously had a huge influence on the story at large in his position as lead narrative designer.
Linde has had an impressive career in the gaming industry so far and it will be interesting to see where he ends up. In the meantime, the Halo story will continue, with Halo Infinite leaving dangling threads that can be followed up in a sequel or otherwise a new story expansion that could be released by Xbox down the road.
Halo Infinite being a live service game has already led to speculation that new campaign content is on the way, though it's unclear when or if that will ever come. For now, Halo fans can work to 100% the single-player campaign and continue blasting each other in the game's online multiplayer arenas.
Halo Infinite is out now for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
Source: Aaron Linde - LinkedIn