Halo Infinite (XB/PC/Cloud/Game Pass) - Big Update out now.

Parksey wrote:I've had it happen a few times, and it's a problem because you deliberately make the franchise "open world" but then it's not actually open at all.

This is especially jarring at the beginning of the game, when the world opens up to you. You get that sense of the possibility and scope opening up on front of you, after previously linear, confined surroundings. You get a the map and icons explained to you with the sense that you can pick where to go next. Then you get the grapple, a tool which essentially makes you master of the landscape behind you.

So I go for the icons and to explore. I don't really like icon-driven exploration like I said, but I head down to the south of the area that's just loaded up. I see a big chasm and a hill above it. If I scale up there with grapple, I can likely jump off and grapple across that chasm. I wonder what's there.

I fail. Hmm maybe I wasn't high enough. I get higher. I jump. I fail.

No actually, the grapple reaches the other side, it just doesn't latch on. I'm not meant to be there yet.

Then you get the "Return to battlefield" messages.

It's annoying as smart use of the grapple can get you up mountains you didn't think you'd be able to scale, especially with ther educed cooldown. You can climb structured and get to the top of them which doesn't seem possible.

So it's jarring for the game to present tools and openness, but shut the player down for certain things, without any indication. That's bad design, to present an opportunity that the player thinks should be doable, given the game rules but then that to arbitrarily be not allowed. It's more Assassin's Creed than BOTW.

This, coupled with the icon/waypoint driven focus on side content (and the side content being repeated across the whole game) means I found the open world stuff ultimately very hollow and exploration a bit dull, which is a shame given it makes a strong start when you emerge into the world. The world itself is also a little too samey.

This is the EXACT place I am at the moment. There's a cool looking wing tower thing on the other side too which grabs your interest and makes you think you should be able to make it across, especially given how small that gap is along with the extra height given to you on the current side. It makes even less sense when you look behind and see an even bigger height difference that you've just been able to freely drop down and across if you arrived that way (which I did).

I'm a big fan of Assasins Creed but this is virtually nothing like those games in it's open world design. Is it a bit rubbish yo you can't visit the entire world from the start? Well yes I guess, as I said I did all the objectives on the island I was on and moved on so it was never a problem but that is just me. The starting area is fully explorable when you go back later...

And as much as the side quests are similar, the Banished bases are at least laid out in completely different ways (bar the FOBS) plus, like, take out an outpost in FarCry and compare it to this. The AI makes huge difference.

Well it's similar to AC because early on in those games, you often used to get presented with this massive city to explore and climb, but then bump into invisible barriers strewn inexplicably across the world, blocking your progress because you hadn't activated that memory yet. Why can't the character access the city due to their memory? It's just across the street.

It's a "gamey" way of fencing the player in, which is at odds with an open world design. Here, you get stuff failing to grapple when it should, jumps that look doable and other illogical things that confuse the player and jerk them out of the experience. "Return to battlefield?" It's open world, and five minutes ago, you were showing me the map and basically saying this WAS my battlefield.

It's also like AC in the sense that it is the same four or five activities stretched across the game's entire map/run time. It's elevated by the combat for the bases, to a certain degree, but not for the FOBs, armour, Spartan cores etc. Rescuing the marines is a good example. The combat itself is as fine as always once you get there. But when you're just shown this on the map, you don't look at the trudge and think, "God I am PUMPED to go escape my 14th group of marines".

Nor do you see something happening in the distance and go to investigate, or see a battle going on and tenatively head over.

It's all very much clichéd open world design, elevated by the grapple and the combat. It's not an exciting world.

To be fair - I've not been following icons at all so my experience has 100% been "see something happening in the distance and go to investigate, or see a battle going on and tenatively head over."

I've basically left the FOBs until last on each area so that I don't get the icons as an option and have to find stuff organically, it's made the experience so much better IMO.

I pretty much do this on all open world games - ignore the map, turn off icons, turn off objective markers and just go and do my own thing. It pretty much always makes them better games to play

I've definitely seen a structure in the distance and went to investigate.... I mean, I did this A LOT!

I'm a huge fan of Halo combat so I do get 'pumped' by saving marines and capturing everything, there is also a difficulty curve, later bases, High value Targets and rescuing marines become far more challenging and I like the rewards, as I said I've all vehlicles opened and a Battle Rifle that's a beast!

It's icon lite also, unless you activley go to map an set a way point you wont see anything till you press down on the D-pad...

I think it does a good job of the geographical design drawing the player toward places, they've nailed the "interesting shape on the horizon" thing IMO

We're going to have to disagree on what icon-lite means, as I've just gone on this:

https://mapgenie.io/halo-infinite/maps/zeta-halo

Ticked all the stuff that appears on your map for side stuff (so bases, FOBs, Armouries, Spartan Cores etc, not the Propaganda Towers or the Audio Logs), and that's still a map full of icons.

And the game is designed around going to FOBs to get these icons to direct you, akin to climbing the towers in the AC games. You can play without them of course, but the game is designed around you doing the FOBs, which is why it pushes you in that direction early doors.

It's not so much the structures and the bases, as you can see them on the map and you go over and explore. But the marines, cores, armories and stuff are just there to hoover up by loading your map, setting a waypoint and going there.

As I have said, the combat is still great and the weaponry is arguably the best it's ever been. Just I find the open world really uninspired after that first hour. You get the grabble and it's captivating for that first hour, but my interest quickly drained away at it repeating a lot of open world game tropes. It doesn't feel as fresh to me as BOTW, which did inject a bit of enthusiasm into me to explore it's world, after growing tired of Bethesda's stuff or Ubisoft's stuff over the years. For me, interest in the world drained pretty rapidly after the first hour or so. It's what keeps it at around an 8/10 game rather than a 9 or 10.

I agree with parksey. But more so than that, when you get to the end game it makes a mess of that whole sequence and wrapping up the story, so you get the worst of both worlds (open world lack of focus and mission structure that tells a compelling story).

The only thing stopping this being really uninspiring is the excellent guns and the engagements with the excellent enemies (over and over).

If the game is designed around it then why I have been having so much fun without any of that?

There are things that I found by exploring, and clearly you can approach it that way. But there isn’t a ‘heat map’ which shows you where you have and haven’t been. So if you want to get the collectibles/needed Spartan cores then you need to use the map/FOBs to highlight them.

Maybe that’s the way to sort these open worlds in future, a means to tell the player where they have and haven’t been and therefore without the icons, wrap up the exploration?

I've got all the collectibles in each area so far perfectly fine. I use my memory to tell me where I've been

And if we're judging open world's in icons then BOTW is a gooseberry fool show of strawberry floating korok seeds everywhere! :lol:

I like the way infinite is presenting the map icon wise (as long as it doesn't get any more dense than this).

A few icons of main places, which makes sense lore wise, and the odd power suit upgrade thing, with nothing in between. I head off to a general area near a marker, but explore all around and usually find a few things.

Good Halo day for me, won one of the signed pieces of Halo Masterpiece artwork and had my best ever game of Team Slayer (absolutely loving the multiplayer in this, more maps please!).

Why does quick resume not work with this? Every time I try to go to the game, it's frozen and I have to quit it and load from scratch.

Victor Mildew wrote:Why does quick resume not work with this? Every time I try to go to the game, it's frozen and I have to quit it and load from scratch.

Quick Resume works fine for me. However, it loses the online connection on resuming the game and seemingly won’t reconnect. It does technically resume fine though I.e doesn’t crash.

Victor Mildew wrote:Why does quick resume not work with this? Every time I try to go to the game, it's frozen and I have to quit it and load from scratch.

Full restart of console (unplug for a few seconds) should sort that, quick resume works after unplugging btw...

Last edited by Photek on Fri Jan 14, 2022 1:00 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Parksey wrote:We're going to have to disagree on what icon-lite means, as I've just gone on this:

https://mapgenie.io/halo-infinite/maps/zeta-halo

Ticked all the stuff that appears on your map for side stuff (so bases, FOBs, Armouries, Spartan Cores etc, not the Propaganda Towers or the Audio Logs), and that's still a map full of icons.

The way you've gone about this map is kind of wrong when applied to in game map. First off the, squad rescues only appear if you've done a nearby FOB or have stumbled into them, this is the same situation with High Value Targets, they only populate when you take out a banished base or stumble across one. Weapons, vehicles, don't appear on the map at all.

Before you capture anything this is what the map looks like for one island. I've used the first open one in the game as an example:

If you capture the FOBS in this map it looks like this:

Anything additional to that you found in game, if you go near an audio log or armour core but didn't pick it up, it pops up on your map its same with Propoganda towers.

On top of all of this is, bar your main mission which you can see by using down on the D-pad and last for 5 seconds, you never see them in game, they are restricted to the map. ACreed has icons dotted all over the nav bar at top at all times, flagging things you cant even see yet because its behind trees, a hill etc. If you don't put down a marker in Halo Infinite, you don't see a single icon relating to anything on screen. They are in no way the same.

Photek wrote:
Victor Mildew wrote:Why does quick resume not work with this? Every time I try to go to the game, it's frozen and I have to quit it and load from scratch.

Full restart of console (unplug for a few seconds) should sort that, quick resume works after unplugging btw...

Thanks. I'll try this later.

twitter.com/ske7ch/status/1482046008494227456

Happy Friday, everyone!

As promised, back with a quick update on the status of Big Team Battle.

Yesterday the test pass was completed and the hotfix is now in the process of going through Xbox certification. As long as no issues arise, we are targeting releasing this hot fix middle of next week. (note that Monday is an office holiday in recognition of MLK Jr Day)

To kick off the new year and also offer a small token of appreciation for your patience during these issues, all players will be granted 5 XP Boosts and 5 Challenge Swaps. This will be active once the hotfix is released and automatically added to the inventory of every player who logs in. This grant offer will remain active for about a month so just log in any time before then and you'll get hooked up.

We continue to work towards the mid-February patch and will share details as we get closer. Additionally, work continues on plans/updates to other key topics we know are top of mind for the community (economy, armor customization, ranked, cheating, networking, etc.).

https://forums.halowaypoint.com/t/halo- ... 5?u=ske7ch

Did a couple of BTB matches this morning and it was a struggle to get in to. Pleased its getting a fix hopefully.

Coming this Tuesday, January 18, the latest free event for Halo Infinite officially arrives. Lock, load, and prepare for the Cyber Showdown!

Halo Infinite (XB/PC/Cloud/Game Pass) - Big Update out now.

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