Lone wolves, rejoice. In another slight blow to Halo Infinite’s development narrative, it’s been confirmed by 343 Industries through their August Development Update vidoc, that although Halo Infinite’s campaign sounds to be intact for launch this holiday, the co-op will be completely unavailable for the mode.
It’s certainly a disappointing revelation, given how prevalent co-op has been in their past campaigns.
“Unfortunately, as we focused the team for shutdown and really focused on a quality experience for launch, we made the really tough decision to delay shipping campaign co-op for launch,” stated Halo Infinite creative head, Joseph Staten.
On top of this, Halo Infinite will also launch without the popular level editor Forge. We won’t have long to wait for either omission, however, as the team has committed to rolling out co-op via a “Season 2” update three months after launch, while the “Season 3” update six months after launch will introduce Forge to the mix.
Whether or not it was an option to simply delay Halo Infinite a further three months is unknown, but given the turbulent history Halo Infinite already has it was probably decided that culling these two features for the launch was perhaps the less damaging option.
“Our number one priority is making sure whatever we ship, whenever we ship it, it meets the right quality bar. Across all platforms, Xbox devices, PC, and all of its different configurations. And when we looked at these two experiences, campaign co-op and Forge, we made the determination they’re just not ready,” Staten said.
“As a studio, we don’t want to ship things if they’re not ready, so people can play them, have fun, have a nice stable, performant experience. So we’re gonna keep campaign co-op and Forge in the oven for a little bit longer and then when they’re ready we’re gonna release them as a part of our seasonal roadmap, next year.”
Despite this monthly update, we’re still no closer to knowing the release date for Halo Infinite. All we’re sure of is it’s a lock for 2021.