Six is right about the daunting task 343 Studios had in front of them: it’d be foolhardy to focus on capturing the magic of Bungie’s earlier games, so forging their own path was the best way forward. And as a long-time fan, we aren’t opposed to the idea of an open-world Halo! As early as the second mission, the 2001 Combat Evolved tossed you into a wide valley, then asked you to bound across hills, speed through caves and intervene in UNSC/Covenant firefights that dotted the landscape. Halo levels were never “open” in the way we use that term today, but aside from the times when they locked you in the Library or made you board one of several starships, you had more room to breathe than the typical console first-person shooter of the day.
But here’s the thing: despite the ample room around you, almost every enemy encounter was polished to a mirror sheen! No matter how many years it’s been since their last playthrough, no one forgets pushing up the beach at the beginning of The Silent Cartographer, or darting across the coastal highways in Halo 2’s New Mombasa. Aside from Halo 1’s repetitive second half, each game’s maps are a lovely mix of memorable terrain and remarkable firefights, burning those first three games (and maybe ODST) into your memory.
Despite playing Halo Infinite on and off since last week, I can’t tell you the name of the first outpost I took, nor what the building looked like in the story mission I undertook 20-30 minutes after that. Now, I could summon up vague statements about what I’ve accomplished: I’ve rescued five UNSC platoons, fought a few Named Enemies, and grappled around one big tower just to see if I could reach the top. But aside from the occasional, hilarious Grunt bark, the details of each skirmish faded mere hours after I went through them.
The Halo Infinite’s and Far Cry’s of the world have abandoned individual, meaningful moments for percentages and acquisitions. When you look at the big picture, your real instrument is a checklist, not a gun. You’re collecting X number of Banished and UNSC audio logs. You aren’t driving to that platoon of Marines to save them: you’re cleaning up the illuminated icon on your map, greying it out, and moving on. These tasks are meant to be done and forgotten about, never savored. Why else would they prevent you from doing them again after completion?
The story missions get the same one-and-done treatment, but I’m in no hurry to retrace my steps there, either. The last time I touched Infinite, I was traipsing through one of Zeta Halo’s deeper underground tunnels, and it made the infamous Library level from 1 look like a masterstroke. Plugging through countless identical tunnels, performing the monotonous busywork of searching for door keys (technically you’re plugging in batteries to power said doors, but that’s the same thing, isn’t it?) while the chipper Weapon edges ever closer to stating “Well, THAT just happened” feels like pulling teeth. If the guns didn’t feel sublime to use, I would have given up and opened the Master Chief Collection by now!
Worse yet, I can’t let go of the feeling that this game is unfinished. Hell, it is unfinished, depending on what you want out of Halo. I can’t play it with a friend until some undetermined date next year. It’s taken ages for them to implement proper Team Slayer playlists in multiplayer (imagine shipping a multiplayer shooter where hitting a Team Deathmatch button isn’t in there from the start!), and they’re still promising that they’ll eventually get to fixing the busted battle pass progression. When you shift a legacy franchise like this in an entirely different direction, you want to put your best foot forward. So why didn’t Infinite even bother tying its shoelaces?
Maybe something will click during the 25+ hours left in front of me (even typing that number out is making me sigh). All I can say is I’ve easily put more than 100 combined hours into the original trilogy, ODST and Reach, but none of them ever made me feel like I was fulfilling an obligation. When I boot up Halo 3, I’m there for the adventure. When I boot up Halo Infinite, I’m there to take a map icon and turn it gray.
