The latest addition to the beloved Halo franchise, 343 Industries’ highly anticipated Halo Infinite, launched its technical demo over the weekend. The demo gave fans the chance to sample three of Halo Infinite's multiplayer maps, and impressions have flooded out in the time since.
Initially announced back in 2018, Halo Infinite has had a complicated development cycle. The COVID-19 pandemic caused Halo Infinite to be delayed, with developers having to work on it at home. The company then considered releasing the game in parts, but that idea was eventually rejected. Then it was reported that 343 Industries had allegedly been outsourcing a substantial amount of the game’s development to other studios, which may have further contributed to the delay, though parts of these reports were directly refuted by 343.
After all these complications and a livestream detailing Halo Infinite's new features in July, the technical demo has finally been released. Digital Foundry took a detailed look at the game's performance across the different console generations, and though the visuals take a significant dip on the Xbox One – going down to 540p in some cases – it's still much better than the first impression fans got of the game last year.
After E3 2020 was canceled due to the pandemic, Microsoft opted to showcase the game for the first time through a livestream. The reception of this initial gameplay trailer was not good, with many complaints about poor performance and stale, ugly visuals. Halo fans can breathe a sigh of relief, however, because the game has come a long way since then.
Visuals have taken a huge leap forward, particularly on the newer Xbox Series consoles and PC, with vastly improved textures and lighting compared to the original trailer. The older Xbox One consoles, on the other hand, have their visuals scaled down quite a bit. Both Xbox One X and Xbox One S have lower texture quality and are capped at 30 FPS. The resolution during gameplay is inconsistent on both of these consoles, with the Xbox One X hovering towards 4K but with the Xbox One S dropping to as low as 540p.
This is compared to a target of 4K at 60FPS and around 1440p at 120 FPS on the Series X, and around 1080p for both 60 and 120FPS on the Series S. Still, these graphical compromises are to be expected in a game that was developed for the newer consoles.
Although this first look at the gameplay is not perfect in any sense, fans of the series have a lot to be thankful for. Halo Infinite's release is several months away meaning 343 still has time to make improvements, and given how many complications have taken place, the game’s development could easily have been catastrophic.
Luckily, the state of the game is significantly better than it was when the first gameplay trailer released back in June of last year, and owners of the older Xbox One models will be able to try the game at no risk given that the multiplayer will be free to play at launch.
Halo Infinite is slated for release in Q4 of 2021 for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.