Halo Infinite multiplayer lets you choose body type and voice — not gender

Halo: Reach was the first Halo game that let players customize a female Spartan in multiplayer. Back in 2010, that felt revolutionary to me, even though it wasn’t a significant visual change in terms of how the armor looked. Halo Infinite has made yet another leap forward in terms of customization by removing the gender option entirely, instead allowing players to choose between three body types and eight voice lines.

I’ve chosen the smallest body type for my Spartan and a feminine voice. I haven’t played enough multiplayer yet to have unlocked all of the poses available — after all, Halo Infinite’s multiplayer only just launched today — but I felt happy to see that every pose is available to every player, regardless of their Spartan’s body type. That means you can be a very muscular Spartan cocking their hip in the “Noble Confidence” pose:

Image: 343 Studios/Xbox Game Studios via Polygon

In researching this story, I discovered that there is a small but vocal subsection of Halo fans who really like the butt on the female Spartans in Halo: Reach and Halo 5. (According to these fans, the Halo 4 butt was not up to snuff.) I’m sorry to say that all of the butts in Halo Infinite look very similar; there isn’t a lot of body type diversity among the three selections. They’re basically small, medium, and large — but the small isn’t that small, and the large isn’t that large. In the interest of transparency, I’ve taken pictures of all three butts for your perusal:

Grid View

• 
  
  
  
  Body Type 1, the smallest body type in Halo Infinite’s customization
  
  
  Image: 343 Studios/Xbox Game Studios via Polygon
  
• 
  
  
  
  Body Type 0, the most muscular body type in Halo Infinite’s customization
  
  
  Image: 343 Studios/Xbox Game Studios via Polygon
  
• 
  
  
  
  Body Type 2, a muscular but lean option in Halo Infinite’s customization
  
  
  Image: 343 Studios/Xbox Game Studios via Polygon
  

This is all using the standard armor available upon booting up the multiplayer; I can’t speak to whether or not the butts will look better in other unlockable armor in the future. Regardless, I’m grateful that Halo Infinite lets me customize my character’s appearance in this way, without locking any of the options into the gender binary.