It looks like open-world exploration is one of the many features coming to Microsoft's flagship series, as we got our first proper look at Halo Infinite during this evening's Xbox Games Conference. Apparently Infinite is several times larger than the last two Halo games combined, and after our brief glimpse tonight we can well believe it.
"Halo Infinite has been built from the ground up to take full advantage of Xbox Series X. Bigger battles, epic vistas, more complex visual effects, displayed with ten times the processing power per pixel of Halo 5. This will be running at a flawless 60 frames-per-second and will allow us to bring the Halo ring to life in ways that have never been possible before," studio head Chris Lee said during the presentation.
After seeing Master Chief and his new friend from the first trailer crash on a strange new Halo ring, we got to see our favourite Spartan marking a location on a display and then heading out in the Warthog, open-world style. Along the way, he takes on grunts, elites, and Infinite's main villains, the brutes, the leader of which basically calls us out for an epic battle to the death. Bring it on.
The demo revealed a bunch of Halo staples, such as the trusty assault rifle and pistol, plus a range of familiar and alien weapons, but there are a few new tricks too, such a grapple hook that Chief uses to get close to his opponents (there doesn't look like there's a dash any more), and a deployable shield that John 117 fires through during one sequence, waiting until it changes colour before pushing through and finishing his opponent. Other than that we got to see lots of lovely Halo-tastic gameplay, with headshots, sticky grenades, and more.
We're promised more in the near future and we should hope so too as Halo Infinite is heading to Xbox consoles and Windows PC this holiday. It was also confirmed that the game will have Smart Delivery, so you'll get the upgraded version when you make the step from Xbox One to Series X.