Halo Infinite director: Here’s why campaign was a no-show at Gamescom

Halo Infinite’s creative director on Thursday sought to reassure fans who were disappointed that Wednesday’s Gamescom: Opening Night Live presentation didn’t show any of the game’s campaign, and are concerned its absence means something’s wrong.

It isn’t, wrote Joseph Staten of 343 Industries. “I’ve played Infinite’s Campaign multiple times,” he said. “But every time I do, I always find something new, tucked away on Zeta Halo. … No matter how many times I play, Halo Infinite remains, fundamentally, super fun to play — and we’re very eager to share all the fun with you through captured gameplay, trailers, and other content once we get this plane safely on the ground.”

Staten said the campaign wasn’t shown because 343 developers are hard at work in “shutdown mode,” which means mission-critical tasks related to finishing a feature-complete game. “For Campaign, that means putting maximum effort into ensuring the wide-open, adventure-filled experience you’ll all get to play on Dec. 8 is as great as it can possibly be,” Staten said. “And gameplay demos and trailers not only take a huge amount of effort to do well, they also take cycles away from bugs and other shutdown tasks.”

Halo Infinite instead got a multiplayer trailer at Opening Night Live, revealing a new character who will join the game during the first multiplayer season, which starts after its Dec. 8 launch. 343 Industries has stressed that Halo Infinite’s campaign and multiplayer (which will also be free-to-play) will launch together, while its cooperative campaign and Forge map-making mode must wait for a later update.

“I hope all of you take comfort from the fact that, honestly, I can’t wait to get back home, fire up the build, and hit ‘Continue’ on the Campaign,” Staten told fans. “But for now, it’s focus-time in the cockpit as we stick the landing.”

343 Industries finally announced Halo Infinite’s launch date on Wednesday. The sixth main chapter in the Halo saga was announced in the summer of 2018 and originally expected to launch with the Xbox Series X in November of last year. But delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic (and a gameplay trailer that did not go over so well) helped push the game out of that launch window and into 2021.