HALO INFINITE UPDATE – APRIL 2022
Hello Everyone,
With Season 2 locked and loaded for May 3rd, we want to share a roadmap of what we’re planning to deliver during Season 2 and for the rest of the year.
More than anything else, we want this roadmap to be accurate and reliable. Some items and dates are certain, and these are clearly listed. Others are marked as “targets” or “goals” and they will become more certain over time. The roadmap’s timeframe will also expand as we announce longer-term initiatives. In other words, this roadmap is an evolving document, and we’ll let you know when we make changes to it.
With all that in mind, here’s the Halo Infinite roadmap for 2022:
This roadmap reflects the same studio priorities that we shared back in March…
- Addressing issues negatively impacting player experience.
- Completing Season 2 and delivering it as promised on May 3.
- Continuing work on Campaign Co-op, Forge, and Season 3.
…with a “priority zero” of team health and getting ourselves into a sustainable development rhythm so that we can deliver great experiences to all of you while maintaining a healthy work/life balance.
We know we need to deliver more content and more features more quickly. Staying true to priority zero means that sometimes we need to slow down in order to stay healthy and move faster later. But we’re also aggressively looking at ways to accelerate.
For example, we want to get the Forge toolset into your hands sooner rather than later so that awesome community maps and modes can more rapidly make their way into the game. To make this happen, we’re targeting a Forge open beta later in Season 2. We’ve successfully had Forge in private flighting with a limited audience for some time, so we’ve decided to forgo a large-scale formal flighting program and go right to open beta. With this approach, we can get the core Forge tools out to everyone quicker while also remaining focused on our core priority of continuing to improve foundational aspects of Halo Infinite. Forge will persist from the open beta onwards, evolving and growing over time.
As we continue to improve and ramp up, please understand that all of us at 343 are fully committed to making Halo Infinite the best Halo experience ever. Indeed, the primary reason that we’re extending Season 2 is to give us time before shipping another Season to fully address “quality of life” improvements based on learnings from Season 1 as well as other data and feedback we’ve collected.
Quality of life (QoL) is shorthand for bug-fixes, new features and/or content to address issues negatively impacting player experience. We’ll be delivering QoL improvements as part of Season releases and as separate updates during Seasons.
Our player-facing term for QoL updates that land during Seasons is “Drop Pods.” And much like their ODST namesakes, these release vehicles are meant to drop in hot, just as soon as they’re ready. Our target is one Drop Pod every month, and you can expect Drop Pods to vary in scope and size. We’ll have more to share about what’s going into Season 2’s Drop Pods as soon as possible after Season 2 launch.
Speaking of which, Season 2 launch is now less than two weeks away, on May 3! If you haven’t already seen the previews for Season 2’s new maps and new modes, please have a look. During these preview videos, you’ll spy some of Season 2’s new armor customization options. And here are a few extra combinations to whet your appetite:
We’ll have a lot more to share about Season 2 including a deep dive into its Battle Pass rewards, events—including brand new “multiplayer narrative events” that place your personal Spartan in the center of an evolving Seasonal storyline—game modes, and much more during a community livestream scheduled for next Wednesday, April 27, at 1:00 PM PST on Twitch.tv/Halo and YouTube.com/Halo. We’ll also be discussing the roadmap in more detail during this livestream.
In summary: we are committed to delivering more content faster; we will accelerate while prioritizing team health; you can expect QoL improvements during Seasons via Drop Pods—and you can expect more regular roadmap updates as our plans snap into sharper focus.
On behalf of the entire Halo Infinite team, thank you for your passion and patience as we embark on the road ahead. We’re fired up to deliver what’s already on the roadmap as well as to deliver other content and experiences that we’re not ready to reveal just yet… but that we can’t wait for you to play.
Joseph Staten
Head of Creative, Halo Infinite
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