343 Industries, the new developers of the Halo franchise have talked about their newly announced Halo Infinite in a live stream on Mixer. To a community question whether the new Halo Infinite game will include a battle royale game mode, Halo writer Jeff Easterling slammed the idea pretty much down.
Halo Infinite was just announced last month, at Microsoft’s E3 press conference and details about the new entry have been sparse. What is clear however, is that the Infinite won’t be a traditional sequel as the last two Halo titles made by 343 Industries, Halo 4 and Halo Guardians. The announcement trailer, while showing off impressive visuals with vast landscape and great details, was intended to tease rather than inform. We know that 343 Industries is using a new engine, the Slipspace Engine to achieve their goals. Coupled with the unusually large environments, it’s not that far off to expect a quite different experience in Infinite. Maybe an open-world even.
Whatever the final product might be, it looks like Halo Infinite will be a big step for the franchise and with a title like Infinite, we expect a different type of game experience, one that keeps players engaged for much longer than its singleplayer campaign. We of course are talking about Games-as-a-Service here. The new business model big publishers are targeting for their blockbuster franchises. GaaS are already here with Destiny being probably the prime example how it can work.
The idea of keeping players engaged for a long time with a game isn’t new, multiplayer titles have done that for decades. What makes GaaS unique is a focus on Co-Op gameplay and continuous, major content updates which aim to keep player counts high – and of course in-game monetization.
This means that GaaS titles usually become huge games with tons of content and game modes, in an attempt to appeal to everyone. So, it’s not that far-fetched to assume that the newest hot trend in the multiplayer scene, battle royale, will become a standard feature for GaaS-type games and multiplayer games in general. A viewer of 343 Industries’ Mixer live stream was having the same thought and directly asked the developer about a possible inclusion of a battle royale mode in Halo Infinite (at 55:55). One of the lead writers at 343 Industries who was in the mixer panel, addressed the question with following.
“I’ll tell you right now, the only BR we’re really interested in is Battle Rifle, okay. So, the original BR. So, calm yourself.”
Pretty bluntly put without leaving much room for interpretation. In the end, time will tell what Halo Infinite is going to become and what features it will have but if you were looking forward for some battle royale action in the Halo universe, you better keep your expectations in check.
