Halo Infinite was developed over a long period of time — a good six years in fact — so it's natural the game went through many, many prototype phases. However, did you know that one of those phases took Infinite into 'hero shooter' territory?
That's right, Halo Infinite could have ended up more like Overwatch than classic Halo before a turn in development, according to a few sources.
The first of those is Chris Ray Gun, a YouTuber known for his podcast work at Last Stand Media. Chris joked about Infinite's development woes as part of a negative reaction to the game's recently released roadmap.
A Halo Infinite developer then replied, saying that the claim wasn't really true. However, the dev did go on to say that lots of different ideas were prototyped, and that those ideas were spun up during the standard prototype phase for video game development. Basically, hero shooter elements were likely tested, but Chris' claim about them eating into core development could be exaggerated.
However, there's another twist, and this one comes from Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier. In a Reddit response, Jason basically backed up the developer, saying that while 343 "spent a while" on hero shooter elements, the initial tweet from Chris was "exaggerated to the point where it's mostly false". Jason also went on to say that he thinks PvP and PvE hero shooter designs were looked at during development.
Wow, there's a lot going on here then. What's clear — from this and Halo Infinite's delay — is that the game went through a complex development cycle before we finally went hands on with it. Ultimately, we're glad the game went down a more classic Halo route in the end, although hero shooter elements would have been interesting to say the least.
What do you make of all this? Glad Infinite turned out the way it did? Let us know in the comments!
Comments 7
Not really shocked, Infinite Season 1 has been a massive letdown but the base game itself is shockingly good. Xbox should have delayed Season 1 for a few months to give 343 time to rest after Infinite's launch, but they wanted that armor money now I guess. Now the usual suspects have been trying to push their angry gamer narrative on Reddit and YouTube. It's not BF 2042, even if the development was a mess. That has less to do with 343 not being Bungie, and much more to do with tech debt and permatemps. But the latter narrative is too mundane and doesn't appeal to angry gamers.
I think the downside to live services is the way Fortnite was updated in its early seasons set everyones expectations for weekly content updates, which has made it harder for new live services that don't update that often
People do realize they were developing a new engine (SlipSpace) along side Halo Infinite do they not? That style of development almost always makes a game's development take longer. Look at MGS5 that took a very long time to come out because Kojima Productions was also developing the Fox engine along with it. Many would argue that game was also not a finished product just like how some folks feel about Halo Infinite. Also notice how both games were their respective developers first attempt at an open world game. I guarantee that also had an effect as well.
Also both games had external drama to consider as well. MGS5 had the Kojima/Konami feud. Halo had multiple leads come and go throughout development.
Say what you will about the game that shipped but it's not like 343 was twiddling their thumbs for years of development. They were going through the process of game development, which 99 times out 100 is messy and difficult.
Edit: Oh and as for Halo being a Hero Shooter, thank goodness they didn't go that route! That would have broken my Halo loving heart!
I am interested in the Hero Shooter, even if it is an event.
I do not like the current Halo which is full of Spartans. I want to enjoy diverse aliens.
I wish they’d gone the hero shooter approach for the multiplayer. As fun as classic Halo is, the multiplayer needs to evolve instead of remain a Quake 3 Arena clone.
Wish I knew exactly when it was I said that they'd do a Hero Shooter.
I think I said that Halo 6 would be a Hero shooter. Just after Halo 5, Hero Shooters exploded, and 343i know nothing but chasing the trend. Halo 4 wanted to be COD, Halo 5 wanted the lootbox, Halo Infinite is now going Battle Royale.
It's funny, for a company that didn't want to hire Bungie employees, and wanted to hire people who "dislike X about Halo", to try expand the series, they've done a lot of regurgatating.
So it probably changed direction around the time Hero Shooter didn't work for Gears 5 (there were gigantic content droughts in Gears 5 until the Hero Shooter side was dropped).
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