Halo Infinite

Halo Infinite is a 2021 first-person shooter developed by 343 Industries and published by Xbox Game Studios, with its campaign released December 8, 2021 for Xbox, PC, and Xbox Cloud Gaming. It’s the sixth mainline entry and Master Chief’s first appearance since Halo 5: Guardians in 2015, and it holds a Metacritic score of 87 on Xbox Series X and 81 on PC — genuinely strong numbers for a launch that, six years earlier, nobody would have predicted from the game’s own reveal trailer.

Its multiplayer went free-to-play for the first time in series history, arriving separately a few weeks ahead of the campaign to coincide with Halo’s 20th anniversary. The campaign shipped without co-op, Forge, or split-screen — features 343 promised would follow later, and mostly did, over the following year.

Technical Specifications

A Troubled Road to December 2021

Halo Infinite was originally meant to launch alongside the Xbox Series X in November 2020. That plan fell apart after its July 2020 gameplay reveal, whose visuals and enemy AI — one particular Brute screenshot, quickly nicknamed “Craig,” became the internet’s shorthand for the entire backlash — drew sharp criticism from press and fans alike. Microsoft delayed the game a full year rather than launch it in that state, and former staff have since described a development process that struggled internally well before the public reveal made the problems visible.

Zeta Halo and the Banished

The story opens with Master Chief already defeated: aboard the UNSC Infinity, ambushed by the mercenary faction known as the Banished, he’s thrown into open space by their leader, Atriox. Six months later, a UNSC pilot recovers him adrift, and the two travel to Zeta Halo — a Forerunner ring installation now under Banished control following Atriox’s apparent death, held by his lieutenant Escharum in his place.

The Weapon

On the ring, Chief recovers an AI built to look and sound like Cortana, designed specifically to track her down and delete her. She succeeds in locating what’s left of Cortana’s presence but fails to carry out her own deletion, and much of the campaign is carried by Chief and this unnamed AI — eventually called the Weapon — working through what’s left of Cortana’s memories together. It’s a story that resolves most of Halo 5‘s cliffhanger in the background rather than on screen — the fate of the Created and Cortana’s rebellion are covered mostly through implication and lore rather than played out directly, a choice a fair number of longtime players still consider one of the series’ more unsatisfying handoffs.

An Open Ring World

Infinite is the first mainline Halo built around a genuinely open world rather than a sequence of linear missions, letting players tackle Banished outposts and side objectives across Zeta Halo in whatever order they choose. The new grappleshot tool, usable in both combat and traversal, became the single most consistently praised addition in the game — pulling players toward enemies, cover, and vantage points in a way that reviewers repeatedly singled out as the best new mechanic the series had introduced in years.

Missing at Launch

Even after the year-long delay, Infinite shipped without campaign co-op, Forge, and split-screen — three features closely tied to the series’ identity since the earliest games. 343’s head of creative, Joseph Staten, said the team seriously considered delaying the game further rather than cut them, but ultimately chose to ship the campaign and first multiplayer season on schedule and treat the rest as a live-service rollout: co-op arrived with Season 2 around three months later, and Forge followed with Season 3 roughly six months after launch. It was a defensible call given the game’s history, but it landed as a disappointment regardless, on top of a fanbase already wary after the 2020 reveal.

Free-to-Play Multiplayer

For the first time in series history, multiplayer was free for anyone to download, funded through a cosmetics-only battle pass and store. Early seasons drew real criticism for slow, grindy progression and a thin initial map and mode selection, but the core gunplay was received warmly from the start, and 343 spent much of the following two years steadily rebuilding content around it.

Reception

Critics were, on balance, considerably kinder than the game’s rocky road to launch suggested they’d be. The campaign earned some of the strongest scores 343 had received for a Halo story, with particular praise for the grappleshot, a tighter, more grounded plot than Halo 5‘s, and a genuine sense that Master Chief had been written with care again. The most consistent criticism, echoed across both critic and player reviews, was that the open world itself felt thinner than its scale implied — repetitive outposts, limited biome variety, and side content that didn’t always justify the format Halo had never used before.

A Redemption Arc, and an Ending

Player sentiment toward Infinite shifted considerably in the years after launch, once co-op, Forge, and a steadier stream of multiplayer content arrived — enough that “is Infinite secretly the best Halo” has become a genuine, if contested, question among longtime fans rather than a punchline. Campaign updates eventually stopped well before multiplayer support did, with 343 confirming further story content wouldn’t continue past a certain point as the studio’s attention shifted to its next project. That next project turned out to be a full engine change and a rebrand to Halo Studios, work that would eventually surface publicly as Halo: Campaign Evolved in 2026 — making Infinite both 343 Industries’ final game under that name and the last mainline Halo built on the studio’s own Slipspace Engine before the switch to Unreal Engine 5.

Where to Play It Today

Halo Infinite‘s campaign is available on Xbox, PC (Steam or the Microsoft Store), and Xbox Game Pass, with co-op and Forge both included following their post-launch rollout. Multiplayer remains free-to-play on all platforms.