343 Industries has finally revealed a larger update on Halo Infinite's development, with the headline being that the game will launch in Fall of 2021.
That's about a year on from where it was intended (launching alongside the Xbox Series S and X), but the team has also provided fresh updates on the game's much-maligned visuals, as well as teasing some multiplayer details in its latest blog post.
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Halo Infinite Launches Fall 2021
“Much of the feedback we heard from the community aligned with our own views and work we were already committed to doing around things like indirect lighting, material response, foliage and tree rendering, clouds, level-of-detail transitions, and character fidelity,” director of art management Neill Harrison explained.
“July was indeed a very much work-in-progress slice of the technology, and a reasonable set of key features from global illumination and dynamic time of day, to GPU-driven rendering and variable rate shading were all in active development," graphics development manager Ani Shastry added.
"Much of the graphics team’s capacity, along with that of some key technical artists, was focused on achieving high resolution and performance leading up to the demo, which meant several of these features didn’t quite get the level of polish and bug fixing that was warranted.” Shastry continues.
Craig the Brute, a character that has become a meme since the game's July reveal, has also gotten an update.
"There’s been further work done on the material fidelity and more variety added for Brute faces, we’re also working to add some hairdos and beards which was something we hadn’t gotten to in July. So, whilst we have come to love our dear old Craig, he’s certainly undergoing a significant makeover," Harrison notes.
The team also teased a new interior multiplayer map with some screenshots. Check them out below.
Images courtesy of 343 Industries and Microsoft
The opening of the blog is written by Joseph Staten, a veteran of the original Halo trilogy from Bungie.
“My first week on the job, I played the entire Infinite campaign. Twice. I was, in a word, stunned—in the best possible way—by what the team had done,” Staten revealed.
“Infinite is, by far, the most expansive and vertical Halo world, ever. Why did the team do this? Because they understand that wonder and freedom are key to the Halo experience."
“I could feel the classic Halo ’30 seconds of fun’ beating at the heart of Infinite’s world. But I had never felt more powerful, more mobile, more in command of a rich set of tactical choices. This was the Halo we imagined back in 2000, finally come to life, after 20 years of technical and creative innovation,” he added.