343 Industries Describes Halo Infinite Multiplayer: New Gear, Vehicles, Customization, Battle Passes, Academy, And More

Halo Infinite Multiplayer was formally revealed yesterday, but 343 Industries has a lot more reveals planned for the rest of the week. Today's info drop was a general overview video that was narrated by several members of the design team.

Halo Infinite Multiplayer is all about "tight, arena-style combat" that's "wide open" and "vehicle-infused," said Head of Creative Joseph Staten. A big focus is on "fair and balanced starts," as Associate Creative Director Tom French put it, with the ability to then scavenge for gear and find "new toys" to form a unique play style.

Those "toys" include powerful abilities that will form a major part of the multiplayer experience, like an overshield or grappling hook. They form part of your inventory, to be used when you want, but if you don't, then your opponents can loot them off your corpse.

Vehicles are also a big part of the game, and they have a few modular components that can be blown off, like wheels on a Warthog or its heavier cousin, the Razorback. When a vehicle is close to being destroyed, it will catch on fire and you'll have only a few moments to decide if you want to ride it out and risk a fiery death or abandon it.

Those are the gameplay hooks, but what about the important stuff: looking good? There will be "millions" of customization combinations on day one for weapons, armor, and vehicles, covering everything from visor attachments to your Spartan's and voice and prosthetics. Each player will also have a Personal AI with a choice of different voices.

How do you get all this stuff? 343 re-iterated that there are no loot boxes or other random gear. Instead, there's a battle pass, which will "never expire," meaning that you can always purchase old passes and choose to progress along them. Battle pass rewards will be themed for each season and will be exclusive to the pass and not offered in the store.

Finally, they touched upon the free-to-play nature of the game and the Academy, which serve the dual purpose of getting a big audience into the game and, for those not overly familiar with the Halo universe, teaching them the ins and outs of the mythos, in addition to the controls. It looks like a solid onboarding approach for new players that another sci-fi shooter franchise stumbled over when it went free-to-play, and one that's likely to pay dividends in the long term by bringing in a fresh new audience and ideally keeping them there.