The long-delayed and even longer-awaited Halo Infinite game for PC and Xbox will be missing two of the series’ most identifiable features at launch.
In a developer update posted to YouTube on Friday, 343 Industries says both the campaign co-op mode, a beloved future in previous games, and Forge mode won’t be present at launch.
Instead, the developer said it hopes to launch the campaign co-op mode three months after the game eventually goes on sale this winter.
The popular Forge mode, which has been present since Halo 3, enables players to customise and share multiplayer maps. It won’t arrive until six months after launch, so we’re looking at Season 3 and April 2022.
“Unfortunately as we focused the team for shutdown and really focused on a quality experience for launch we made the really tough decision to delay shipping campaign co-op for launch,” Joseph Staten said during the update, “and we also made the tough call to delay shipping Forge past launch as well.”
You can see further comments from Staten on the matter from around 17 minutes in the YouTube clip below.
The news is certainly a disappointment for long-time Halo gamers. Infinite was initially earmarked as the headline launch title for the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles, but the release date was pushed back by an entire year.
For it still not to be ready coming up to 18 months after the initially proposed launch date reflects the challenges of getting a AAA game completed in the modern pandemic era. It’s probably better for all concerned that Microsoft and 343 Industries are holding off until the experience is ready in order to avoid debacles like we saw with Cyberpunk 2077, a game yet to regain its reputation.
However, not everyone is impressed by the delay…
Halo Infinite will launch on Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One and Windows PCs from ‘Holiday 2021’. It’s also going to be available on Game Pass on day one.
