Halo Infinite Gets Development Update & Fall 2021 Release

Halo Infinite will release in Fall 2021 according to a new blog post from 343 Industries. In the first development update since Joseph Staten joined the team as Creative Director following it’s delay back in August, Staten made the announcement himself as part of an in depth look at what improvements the team has been making to the game in the time since we last saw it.

The team acknowledges that that the game didn’t look its best when we saw it over the summer, but assures fans that they’ve been taking in all the feedback and have improved many of the troublesome areas that were pointed out. Development Manager for the Graphics team at 343 Industries, Ari Shastry highlighted some of these changes that have been made. “Some of the key areas of progress include better quality of global illumination, ambient occlusion, shadows, volumetric lighting, sky, and atmosphere. We have also addressed issues with our GPU-driven rendering and texture streaming solution that should mitigate the LOD popping and texture quality issues that were prevalent in the July demo.”

We also got an update from Halo Infinite’s Live Team, giving us an idea of what they plan to do with the game’s free-to-play multiplayer. Some of the key pillars that they had in mind when creating the multiplayer experience were maintaining a player-first focus, offering unambiguous value, and allowing player expression. Following up on the these pillars, Ryan Paradis, Design Director for the Live Team, said that the having the multiplayer be free-to-play has “demanded that we examine how we want to build and release content” in addition to influencing its key pillars. Even though they’ll be trying some new things in regards to Halo’s legacy, they’ll always keep these key pillars in mind. The Live Team also provided our first look at one of Halo Infinite’s multiplayer maps, as well as a couple of the different armor coatings that you can customize your Spartan with.

I highly encourage you to go read the full blog post for yourself, as it goes into much greater detail about everything that 343 has been working on for the past few months. Staten closed out the blog post by stating that the studio will be providing more updates in the future, so we can look forward to getting more fresh looks at Halo Infinite as it marches towards its Fall 2021 release window. I for one am highly anticipating whatever they have to show us next.