"There was a pretty significant scaling back" - Halo Infinite developer on cutting portions out of the open world

Halo Infinite was the first open-world experience in the series. Given its new direction, 343 Industries had to make some significant changes over the period of the game's development.

Halo Infinite was touted as the series' return to form after the not-so-stellar campaigns of the previous Halo titles. However, initial development hurdles and the creation of a cross-generation title posed huge challenges to 343 Industries' original vision of Halo Infinite.

On a recent podcast, head of creative at 343 Industries Joseph Staten disclosed information on the tumultuous development of Halo Infinite. He explained how players' initial reactions to the game led the team to make substantial changes to its open-world design.

Another key reason for the changes, according to Staten, was Halo Infinite's graphical fidelity. The game was built for the Xbox Series consoles but was scaled back and optimized for Xbox One hardware.

Creating a cross-generation game is always challenging, as it limits developers from using the full potential of new and improved console hardware.

Staten said on the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences podcast:

"We didn't have time, the time to go after the level of fidelity across as much variety as we wanted to. We made huge strides from the E3 demo to when we shipped the game, but we still had to scale back, make targeted cuts."

Halo Infinite's gameplay reveal wasn't received particularly well by fans, as the game's graphics had barely any noticeable improvement over Halo 5.

Given that it was meant to be a next-gen Halo experience, players were expecting the title to be a visual powerhouse, showcasing the capabilities of Xbox's new Series consoles.

Halo Infinite was built using a new engine that brought a number of improvements both from a visual standpoint as well as gameplay.

343 Industries even revealed their plans to launch the title alongside the release of Xbox Series consoles. Taking an extra year of development truly benefited the game, as the visuals were substantially improved compared to the E3 demo.

However, the developers had to tone down the game's open-world aspect substantially by making targeted cuts in the final release. This was done to deliver a functional and enjoyable experience for all players regardless of their gaming platform.

Staten said:

"We didn't end up cutting that muchultimately from the open world but I know that from the original designs there were a pretty significant scaling back of what the team had hoped at one point that they could deliver on."

Staten added that many of the team's original ideas did make it into the game in some capacity. However, there were some pretty significant changes that the developers had to make in order to meet the deadline for their project.

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343 Industries head of creative discusses what an open-world game means to the Halo Infinite team and the franchise

Staten also discussed 343 Industries' philosophy regarding the open-world genre and the delivery of a quality Halo experience. He explained:

"We wanted to free ourselves from a lot of the expectations of open-world games, which is why we struggled for a long time in terms of how to talk about it in terms of our marketing promotion because we didn't want people to get the wrong impression.

"We are like an open-world game in as much as our game is a lot more open than it used to be. Halo's always been a relatively open game in terms of its geometry for a shooter, but for us, we weren't layering on a whole bunch of systems."

The developers didn't want to alienate the series' long-time fans by focusing too much into the open-world aspect of Halo Infinite. Instead, they devoted their time and resources to improving the core aspects of Halo, i.e. first-person-shooting and weapons.

The game was supposed to feature a robust crafting system, which, of course, didn't make it into the final release as it would've been detrimental to the core Halo experience.

Halo Infinite is not the best game in the series, not by a long shot. However, it is a massive step in the right direction.

343 Industries might not have had a good track record with their Halo titles since Halo 4. However, the develepors are certainly trying to deliver the quintessential Halo experience that players have been asking for since Halo 3.