Halo Infinite News

I don't trust those SolCore types...



Complete all of your Weekly Challenges and the Ultimate Challenge to earn this week’s Ultimate Reward – the Solarian Legend MK41 SPNKr coating.

A new Ultimate Reward will become available every week, so be sure to keep an eye on your Challenges and take advantage of these free rewards.

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You see George, you really had a wonderful life!



Grab the Second Chance bundle from the Shop, which includes the following customization items:

• Jacknife coating for all armor cores
  
• HAZMAT Second Chance chest attachment
  
• HAZMAT FAM-90 Stabilizer shoulder pads
  
• Can Do stance

Get out there and show us what you can do!

Season 4: Infection was released just last week, bringing a plethora of new content to Halo Infinite, and we’ve got a little something extra to share with you all in the form of Solitude – a remake of Plaza from Halo 5: Guardians – which you’ll be able to jump into… tomorrow!



To help celebrate the arrival of Solitude for tomorrow, we’ve sat down with multiplayer designers Cayle George (Lead Level Designer), Cliff Schuldt (Level Designer), and Ryan Bergstrom (Level Designer) to learn a little bit more about the creation of this new take on a fan-favorite map.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

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Let’s kick things off with some Plaza appreciation: what are some of the elements of this map that you think make it such a fan-favorite?

The first thing to say here is that Plaza really was one of the best Strongholds maps in Halo 5. Contesting and controlling zones on Plaza was incredibly fun, in no small part because traversal of the map was so interesting – there were lots of different flanking routes that always kept players on their toes while on the defense and open to a lot of engagement opportunities while on the offense. That made it work well for a bunch of different modes and gave it a lot of replayability.

Out of all of that, we really saw a lot of cool trick jumps emerge out of Halo 5’s movement on Plaza, which added a whole new layer of competitiveness that made it an instant favorite.



In Halo 5, Plaza is a neon-lit city street. In Halo Infinite, we see that Solitude looks very different. What inspired this new visual direction?

From the outset, our philosophy with remakes is that we want to explore these familiar spaces with alternate themes.

Part of that is just because it’s fun and interesting from an artistic standpoint, especially when we’re working with the new assets and palettes of Halo Infinite’s Forge mode, but it also makes it easier for players to parse some of the adjustments and tweaks to sandbox, scale, and other factors that inevitably happen across games.

If you go into a remake of a map and it looks exactly the same but the game plays differently (which Halo Infinite does compared to Halo 5), your brain can run into some “uncanny valley” territory where it just doesn’t quite feel right.

As a result of all those things, we thought it would be interesting to explore what Plaza would look like in a more desolate, abandoned setting.

Visuals aside, are there any notable differences in geometry between Plaza and Solitude, or is this a 1:1 remake?

Solitude is very close to being a 1:1 remake in terms of spacing, but the height and overall verticality of the map has been adjusted. There are some pieces of gameplay that inevitably won’t translate between Halo 5 and Halo Infinite because they play quite differently, but this is a map that aims to be true to the original with lots of cool new gameplay opportunities afforded by Halo Infinite’s sandbox toys.

Like Empyrean (the remake of The Pit), Solitude was made using Halo Infinite’s Forge. What are some of the advantages we’ve found internally that come with using this tool to create new multiplayer maps?

Forge is a tremendously useful tool when it comes to playtesting maps and making quick adjustments, which has definitely been a great advantage to have. If something isn’t feeling quite right or we want to experiment with an idea, Forge can simply make that process of ideation and iteration happen with greater speed than you’d have with a more “traditional” dev-made map.

How have we been finding that Solitude plays with Halo Infinite’s sandbox? Any fun playtesting stories to share?

At the very beginning, we put the Stalker Rifle where the Lightrifle used to be in Halo 5. As it’s so open in that middle area, the Stalker Rifle actually ended up annihilating anyone and everyone who walked into that space – especially in-combination with the Sniper.

That’s all part of the fun when it comes to creating remakes in a new game with a new sandbox. The Stalker Rifle seemed like a reasonable weapon to put in the Lightrifle spot, only for us to end up discovering that we’d basically created a new power weapon.

We pivoted that to the M392 Bandit, which players got their hands on as a new sandbox toy in Season 3.



Which modes have we found are particularly fun to play on this map?

Just like Halo 5, we found that Strongholds is a really good time on Solitude. King of the Hill is a close second, and we hope players will find this map to overall be just as versatile and fun as its Halo 5 counterpart.

Are there any cool Easter eggs that fans should keep an eye out for on this map?

Yes? 😉

With Empyrean in last year’s Winter Update and now Solitude, can you share anything more about future Forge maps from the dev-side?

We are working on maps in the Forge tool to release to players. What that means is that we’re constantly playtesting and internally reviewing what maps we think will resonate with fans, and we’re also keeping our eyes on what the community is making in Forge to be featured in the Community Collection playlist.

We have to really weigh what the biggest bang for our buck is in terms of the value that we can add to the constantly growing content pool, and those are plate tectonics that are constantly shifting.

Thank you for joining us once again to tell us more about the process of creating these awesome maps. Do you have any parting words to share?

We hope you’ve all been enjoying Season 4 so far. It’s been great seeing people share their clips online of amazing plays in Infection or looking under the bridge on Forest (despite our warnings not to!)

Keep creating, keep sharing, and we hope you have a good time on Solitude.

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New Arena Unlimited will be arriving tomorrow as the featured playlist for the next week, featuring a range of modes that will be playable on Forest and Solitude, so you’ll have the opportunity to jump straight into this new map and start slaying.

Let’s see how well you remember this dance…

Suit up, Spartans. It’s time for some hazard pay!

Season 4: Infection released last week, which means it’s time to kick off its first event, which features a free Event Pass with 10 tiers of customization rewards for your HAZMAT armor.



Let’s get you a full debriefing…

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[h2]Hazmat Event[/h2]



From June 27-July 11, the HAZMAT event will be active. This is a free event that anybody can jump into, featuring a 10-tier Event Pass full of customization items to outfit your Spartan’s new HAZMAT armor.

You know the drill: complete Event Challenges to earn tiers in your Event Pass and outfit your HAZMAT armor with your rewards!

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[h2]Playlists 'n' Plaza[/h2]

A new season means new content – new maps, modes, and more! You can jump right into the latest and greatest seasonal action with the New Arena Unlimited and New BTB Unlimited playlists.

• WEEK ONE: New Arena Unlimited: June 27-July 4
  
• WEEK TWO: New BTB Unlimited: July 4-11

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

In addition to all the new Season 4 goodness included in the New Arena Unlimited playlist will be Solitude, our remake of the fan-favorite map Plaza from Halo 5: Guardians created in Halo Infinite’s Forge.

For a closer look at Solitude with some of our multiplayer designers, check out our Q&A blog below!

Solitude Preview | Season 4

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[h2]Hazmat Armor[/h2]



Built to stand against all manner of threats and dangerous conditions, designed to be used by both super-soldiers and unaugmented personnel, HAZMAT armor comes to Halo Infinite in Season 4.

OSTEO combat engineering suits incorporate an array of contingency systems focused on surviving extended operations in extraordinarily harsh working and combat environments. HAZMAT armor is for those who specialize in delving into the heart of dying Forerunner facilities, for hunters operating in blighted waters and poisoned winds, search teams exploring sites scarred by chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons used in the Covenant War, and even more insidious threats the galaxy has to offer.

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[h2]Shop & Ultimate Reward[/h2]

[h3]Shop: Second Chance Bundle[/h3]

Available in the Shop this week is the Second Chance bundle, which features:

• Second Chance chest attachment (HAZMAT)
  
• FAM-90 Stabilizer shoulder pads (HAZMAT)
  
• Can Do stance
  
• Jacknife armor coating (for all Armor Cores)

[h3]Ultimate Reward[/h3]

Complete all your challenges for the week and you’ll unlock this week’s Ultimate Reward: the Solarian Legend weapon coating for your M41 SPNKr.



[h3]Free Gift![/h3]

Log in at any time during the HAZMAT Event and you’ll unlock the War Storage backdrop for your Spartan ID.



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The HAZMAT Event is now live! Jump into Halo Infinite and complete your challenges to progress that Event Pass and unlock free HAZMAT-themed rewards.

The Containment Event will arrive later in Season 4, starting on August 29, which will also run for two weeks (through September 12) and offers an additional 10 tiers of free HAZMAT-themed rewards.

See you out there, HAZMAT honchos!

Every time a player saves their Forge project, they generate a "version" which copies and saves the state of their creation. In order to tidy up some of that space, we will begin removing old, unused player-generated content from the servers on June 28.



Here's what you need to know:

• We will never delete your 10 most recent versions
  
• We will never delete your published versions
  
• We will never delete versions you lock (you can lock up to 30 different versions per asset)
  
• Versions older than 30 days are subject to deletion

For all Forgers out there, as the old adage goes: save your work!