343 Reveals What's Coming To Halo Infinite In Late 2022 & Early 2023

343i lied again! Split screen co-op cancelled. After the Halo 5 fallout it couldn't be clearer that they promised to make the next Halo with split screen co-op.
Please MS just shut this incompetent company down.
Edit: And season 3 delayed until March next year! Game development is hard I get that, but when you promise very achievable things and don't deliver I'm sorry but it's just not good enough on a professional level.
Remember that all of these features were supposed to be available at launch. Marketed as such as well. Some people will have bought the game fully expecting to play Split-Screen. There should be a refund/discount program at least here to compensate for the complete and total disaster that this has been.

There are 750 employees at 343 Industries and they’re struggling to get the barest of features released. Something clearly isn’t working and it’s likely bad management.

On a day when MS is arguing why the Activision deal should go through and then this news comes out. I'd rather the deal was blocked than Activision turn into a 343i mess.

@pip_muzz
Split screen co-op is not as easy as you think. Instead of all resources of the console being allocated to show one view of the world you have to allocate resources to show two simultaneous views on one console.

I completely understand the need and tradition behind this feature, but I don't want to compromise the technical aspects of the game to achieve this feature.

I saw the writing on the wall for AAA split screen at the start of the last generation and now I have a gaming setup of two TVs and two consoles. I can understand that not everyone has the physical space or money to afford such a setup, but again, I don't want to get a gimped experience just for this feature.

I do want to add though that 343 should just stop split screen talk in the future. It is a promise that is too difficult to obtain in an open-world AAA FPS game. I don't know who in their right mind would commit to such a feature in the future unless you are gimping the game down to many platforms and supporting the lowest common denominators.

Forge better be spectacular as they claim. Because the complete lack of multiplayer maps is a joke! Let the fans make maps through Forge and have the best ones be added to official if you are incapable of making more than 4 maps a year...

@NeoRatt Gears 5 managed it fine.
The difference is The Coalition are a talented developer and 343i aren't.

@NeoRatt "Split screen co-op is not as easy as you think"

It's not really about the feature being easy, it's about them prioritising everything except a feature that 1) was standard in Halo until 343i took over, and 2) 343i themselves promised.

I'm sure the original builds for Halo 6 was more traditional that could handle split screen, so promising the feature was more reasonable. When they rebooted the development to the open world Halo Infinite, they should have known better, and should have communicated it.

But this again speaks to 343i's inability to either have that open communication, or the sense to know the difficulty of what they are promising.

It further seems like Microsoft sacrificed Halo to acquire CoD, what a huge shame. As for split-screen cancelled, it looks like another situation where ditching the XB1 would've gone a long way to resolving problems.

@Grumblevolcano Halo 5 had many of the same problems. This is a problem of the studio, not the consoles they are working on.

@Kaloudz please no 🤣 I'd much rather see The Coalition carry on with Gears and The Coalition have a go at Halo. Just leave 343i out of it forever.

For proof of the lies, "we're sorry", "we're listening and we'll improve" here is the response from 343i after Halo 5 had the backlash for the split screen removal.
https://www.destructoid.com/343-industries-promises-to-bring-split-screen-back-for-the-next-halo/
The company cannot be trusted.

@pip_muzz
Gears 5 uses Unreal engine, is TPS, and isn't very open world at all to a built from scratch technology, FPS, and open world game.

Technically these games are not at all apples to apples comparisons.

@Richnj
I agree that they shouldn't have thought they could do this to begin with. But, I would rather them shoot for the stars then target mediocrity. Now that they have cancelled co-op I expect some technology improvements to the game. They probably pre-allocated console resources to achieving the split screen co-op stuff. Now they can free those resources and use them to improve the game.

@NeoRatt TPS to FPS makes zero difference in terms of Split Screen ability. Gears 5 isn't as open world as Halo granted but you can still get a decent way apart.
It's just the lazyness.
343i could simply add a "co-op" mode where the main campaign missions are edited and re-designed slightly to have a smaller gaming field. Having played the campaign Single-Player this would absolutely fix the problem. But rather than think creatively as to how to solve the problems, they cancel Split-Screen to focus on service model monetisation. It's very concerning for games moving forward under the GP model as well

@pip_muzz
Honestly, that is 100% speculation and assumption.

We don't know what campaign stuff Halo Infinite is planning in the future. And therefore we don't know if there is campaign features planned that would kill split screen.

As for Gears open world, it is not at all open world, each chapter of the game takes place in a fixed world, I can't roam between the worlds and do other things, I can't do anything other then play through them.

The closest comparison to Halo Infinite's open world would be something like Borderlands. And Borderlands chose the cell-shaded graphical art style probably to allow them to support split screen co-op.

I'm sorry for those who are missing out on campaign split screen that's a real blow. It doesn't impact me but for myself I'm happy they're moving their developers on to other things.

It shouldn't be this way. We shouldn't have to have multiplayer or campaign suffer because of how things are managed at 343. I'm thinking directly of how multiplayer devs were taken off networking issues to fix online campaign coop.

Outside of that the timings here aren't great. I do like some of the content being presented here. I'm pretty hyped for some of it but wow March...

@Kaloudz 🤣 everybody makes mistakes. But when a flagship company drops the ball again and again and again... Something has to be done. I also really enjoyed Halo 4 too btw. Worst thing Halo 5 did (apart from dropping split screen) was to undo all the really cool heartfelt Cortana stuff that 4 did so well.

And STILL Halo players who prefer local, offline play get shafted. Let's get right to the truth here; the lack of the same offline, local splitscreen multiplayer modes that even Combat Evolved on the original XBox managed to pull off has NOTHING to do with any technical limitations of the hardware and EVERYTHING to do with the industry adage, "Any time a user is offline is time their experience can't be gated, controlled, or exploited for more $$$". Just like all the basic features including huge swaths of the campaign left on the cutting room floor (including varied weather and environments, which AGAIN, even Combat Evolved managed to do) in favor of thousands of $$$ worth of Fortnite wannabe skins; 343's priorities are what this is really about, and by extension Microsoft's.

Supposedly you can sign in with other players to play splitscreen...provided each player does so with a SEPARATE XBox account, which pretty much defeats the purpose and goes out of its way to make it as difficult as possible for players to enjoy sessions together on the couch. This was DELIBERATE, and I'm calling out 343 and Microsoft on it.

Halo was XBox's first and is still their foremost flagship franchise, bar none. How it's been handled and the degree of disrespect to the fans who've supported it for the past two decades is a travesty with Halo Infinite. The debacle that has transpired with this game has been unnecessary, inexcusable, and all about the $$$.

It sounds awesome for the most part! But yeah the lack of local co-op is a major bummer. Still at least with them wrapping up on campaign stuff they can start to get more maps coming hopefully.

@BartoxTharglod
I do agree their open-world is generic at this point. But this is a live service, so I would expect that it was designed in a way they could add a lot to it. If this is all the open-world will ever be then I think history will frown upon Halo Infinite.

This is like a slow and painful death by a thousand cuts. Every week it's "we're delaying this" or "we're cancelling that".

Obviously AAA development is difficult - even more so since COVID threw a spanner in the works - but I'm in agreement with a lot of people here; 343 Industries are kind of coming off as inept.

They've had four cracks at Halo now. Halo 4 had a decent campaign and bad multiplayer. Master Chief Collection was an absolute train wreck for years. Halo 5 had a bunk story, albeit with good multiplayer. And now Halo Infinite is a non-stop live service rollercoaster ride of disappointment.

If there isn't a massive managerial and structural shake-up at 343 before Microsoft wants another Halo game made in however many years, just kill the franchise off. I'd rather remember it being good than see it run into the ground.

Season 3 delayed by 4 months.

1 new weapon and 1 new grenade in 14 months since release.

Absolutely shambolic. Just fire 343 already.

343 releasing roadmaps for content is like Whose Line Is It Anyway?. Where the promises are made up and the dates don't matter.

343 Industries continues to be incompetent despite being given ample time and budget.
The top management should be changed. Now. How can Bonnie Ross continue to be in that position?

This is disappointing.

I still don’t understand why it takes them a year to add Mission Replay.

I’m amazed it wasn’t included at launch - as others have said on here many gamers like to replay their favourite Halo levels repeatedly. Surely this should have been a feature easily implemented at launch? I can’t think of a single reason this is so difficult to roll out - just have a system with a ‘primary’ campaign save that the player can return to whenever they wish and a separate save for Mission Select. Or am I missing something?

The Campaign is a good return to form for Halo and I’d love to see them expand it with new missions and areas. Maybe also add changing seasons/weather to the existing biome - just to add some more variety and more replay value.

@Kaloudz I wouldn't say the campaign is great, but it is the best part of Infinite and more campaign is what would bring me back to the game. But the multiplayer is where they make that microtransaction money, so of course it's the sole focus.

@BartoxTharglod Yeah, I remember hearing about the open world stuff, like the dead spartans and the upgrades, and it sounds cool, but I've just gone through Rage 2, and it has dead "rangers" and character upgrades.

And between the two, (and me prefering the original designs of these franchises more) it seemed like something that fits more with Rage.

And MS own both these franchises. Unless it's ODST 2, I'd leave the open world FPS genre to Rage, and let Halo just be Halo.

@Grumblevolcano what a strange though. 343 is not involved in the negotiations, why would you think they are?