Halo Infinite’s free-to-play multiplayer mode won’t bring back Halo 5’s controversial loot box system, 343 Industries revealed today. The team shared a bit more details about the F2P multiplayer experience in a video today, which includes a lot more gameplay footage than what we saw yesterday.
As expected, Halo Infinite will offer players literally millions of ways to customize their Spartans in multiplayer, with different armor coatings, emblems, gloves, kneepads, and more to unlock. The customization experience will also be available on the go Halowaypoint.com as well as the Halo Waypoint mobile app, which is nice.
Halo Infinite will also re-use the popular Battle Pass system seen in many other live service games, though with a unique twist: Halo Infinite’s Battle Passes won’t expire at the end of a season. This means that when a new season begins, players can keep progressing in their old Battle Pass or purchase the new one for the current season. It will also be possible for players to purchase Battle Passes for previous seasons to unlock cosmetic items they missed. However, plenty of cosmetic items will be free to unlock just by playing the game.
The Halo 5 power-ups such as the Overshield and Active Camouflage will be back in Halo Infinite, but they will drop on the floor if Spartans get killed before they got the chance to use them. Today’s video also mentioned an important change regarding vehicles, which will now reflect the damage taken more realistically. Players will be able to blow tires and make vehicles more difficult to drive, and vehicles that end up on fire will eventually explode after some time.
343 Industries also tried to make Halo Infinite’s multiplayer more inclusive with an in-game Academy for learning new tricks against bots. Every player will also have a personal AI to help them on the battlefield, and the game will provide different voice and personality options to choose from.
Halo Infinite still has no precise release date beyond the “Fall 2021” release window, but 343 Industries confirmed that both the campaign and multiplayer modes will be released at the same time. Making the game free-to-play on Xbox consoles and PC with cross-play and cross-progression support is a pretty big move, and it’s the best way to ensure that it’s going to reach a much bigger audience than previous Halo games.
