Developer 343 Industries' next big project is Halo Infinite, revealed earlier this year at E3. Aiming to deliver a next-level Halo experience, 343 is hard at work creating the game. In order for Infinite to win people over, though, one of the key things it will need is good features — both fan favorite ones of old that 343's games haven't had, and brand new ones that expand the franchise in exciting new ways. Here are five features that we think Infinite needs to have.
Read: Everything we know about Halo Infinite
Playable Elites
One of the most sought-after features right now in Halo is Playable Elites. When Bungie introduced the ability to play as these soldiers of the Covenant in multiplayer in Halo 2, people loved having this option so much that it remained a feature in both Halo 3 and Halo: Reach. However, starting with Halo 4, players have been forced to play as Spartans, and 343 has offered no definitive reasons as to why.
This has prompted people to campaign strongly for playable Elites to return, to the point where the people making the fan-made Halo title Installation 01 (pictured above) are including the option in their game. Needless to say, making it possible to play as Elites again in a AAA Halo experience would effectively make a vocal majority happy.
Lore Codex
Something that would be beneficial for players who want to learn more about Halo's extensive universe without buying external content such as novels would be a lore codex system. This would give casual players the opportunity to ease into Halo's vast universe by reading short text blurbs that condense the wide scope of the franchise into a simpler format, while not infringing upon the core experience itself. Halo Wars 2 got its own iteration of this with its Phoenix Logs, so hopefully there's a good chance we'll get something similar in Halo Infinite.
Selective Installation
Recently, the Master Chief Collection was updated with a feature called Selective Installation, which lets players pick and choose which of the four Halo games included in the collection they want to have installed. While Halo Infinite will only be a single game, I do think this feature should be brought to it in some way. Specifically, I think having the power to separately install the multiplayer modes and the campaign would be fantastic for players who are low on hard drive space.
Read: Is returning to the Master Chief Collection worth it?
Crossplay between console and PC
As the description of the Halo Infinite trailer reveals, Halo Infinite will be on both Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs. Because of this, there's a chance that it will also be part of the Xbox Play Anywhere program, and will potentially even have crossplay features.
Crossplay with first-person shooters is always tricky, of course — keyboard and mouse gives PC players a clear edge in firefights — but it would be amazing to be able to play campaign co-op, Forge, or custom games with your friends who happen to own the system opposite of yours. It shouldn't be enabled for Halo's ranked modes, but almost every other part of the game would benefit from crossplay functionality.
Campaign theater
Halo's Theater mode allows players to watch their play sessions over in order to see where they made mistakes, record clips, and take screenshots. Every Halo game since Halo 3 has had Theater, but both Halo 4 and Halo 5 lack a version that works with the campaign mode. This makes getting visual captures of the campaign levels almost impossible, which is something that quite a lot of people miss. Adding Campaign Theater to Halo Infinite would inspire the photographic and cinematographic sides of many fans, and would lead to epic screenshots and video clips of the game's singleplayer environments.
Your thoughts
What do you think about these features? What's a feature you think needs to be in Halo Infinite? Let me know.
Read: Complete Halo timeline series
