5 things to know about Halo Infinite
Halo Infinite's campaign is landing in just a couple of days and our full review of the game – encompassing both the single-player campaign and multiplayer – is ready for you to read. Once you've finished reading the review, come back here for some additional tidbits of info. Don't worry, this list is spoiler-free, too, so you can read on without fear of having specific story beats ruined.
You don't have to do Halo Infinite's open-world objectives, but you should
Halo Infinite is a big departure for the series. Instead of a series of linear missions like previous games, Halo Infinite has adopted a semi-open world structure. While the campaign still has a linear progression, players can explore a partially open world in between missions. Players can claim forward operating bases, hunt for collectibles, and take out high-value Banished targets in the open world.
You don't have to do any of this stuff if you don't want to, and instead, you can railroad the main story until it's finished. You shouldn't do that, though, because the open-world portions of Halo Infinite are good fun and offer some helpful support. For instance, forward operating bases serve as fast travel points and a place where you can call in extra weapons and vehicles. Complete enough open-world objectives, and eventually, you'll be able to call in all sorts of things.
The campaign should still be on your radar even if you're only interested in multiplayer
While Halo Infinite's campaign is still a couple of days away, the game's multiplayer has been out for a few weeks now. Even if you're primarily interested in multiplayer, you might want to check out the campaign because you'll be able to unlock multiplayer cosmetics while playing it. We'll leave it at that, but just know that they're out there waiting to be found.
Master Chief is back in action
If you were frustrated by Halo 5 and the fact that you spent a significant portion of the game playing as Jameson Locke of Fireteam Osiris, you can breathe easy because the focus is firmly back on Master Chief in this game. 343 Industries, to their credit, promised that Chief would be a larger focus of future Halo games after fan feedback regarding Halo 5, so it's nice to see them stick to that promise with Halo Infinite.
You might want to watch some recap videos before diving into Halo Infinite
It's been a long time since the last mainline Halo game. Halo 5 released in 2015, meaning it's now been six years since the Chief's last outing. With the plotlines in the Reclaimer saga a fair bit more complex than Halo narratives of the past, it might not be a bad idea to sit down for a refresher on at least Halo 5. Fortunately, there are plenty of YouTube videos that do just that, though you might want to read up on Halo Wars 2 as well since that game introduces The Banished, a group of ex-Covenant soldiers who serve as Master Chief's primary opposition in Halo Infinite.
Get ready for a longer playthrough than you're used to
Historically, the Halo campaigns have all been relatively short affairs. While most Halo campaigns fall in the range of 8-10 hours (at least according to the averages listed on How Long to Beat), Halo Infinite players can easily get 15 hours or more with the open-world content that's present in the game. If you were to speed through the main story, we imagine you'd end up in that 8-10 hour window, but why would you do that when we opened this article suggesting the opposite?
Wrap-Up
Halo Infinite is an exciting entry in the Halo series in that it feels familiar while blazing a new path forward for the series. You can see for yourself how the game accomplishes that when Halo Infinite's campaign lands on Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC on December 8th.