Halo Infinite’s cosmetic system has been throwing me for a loop all week. The moment I think I have it figured out, some newly discovered aspect of it has me scratching my head again. It started with the ‘1’ player icon that I reasonably assumed was a reflection of my player level, but when it never increased as I leveled up, I eventually realized that the default player icon is just the number one. What? That was just the tip of the iceberg of things about Halo Infinite I don’t understand, and I have to believe I’m not the only one.

Conceptually, I understand what Halo Infinite is trying to do. Each individual piece of armor can be customized with different parts earned through the battle pass or purchased in the store. That level of detail and personalization is pretty neat, and I look forward to tailoring my Spartan from visor to knee pad for years to come. There’s also customization options for each UNSC weapon and vehicle, as well as your body type and prostheses. You can also change the voice, color, and model of your character’s AI companion. The number of customization options is dizzying, but I’m struggling to figure out how exactly it all works.

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There are three ‘armor cores’ to choose from, a rare, epic, and legendary armor (which each look slightly different), but then you can layer ‘armor kits’ on top of those, which also make them look different. You start with the rare core, to which you can apply one of a dozen different colors to and… that’s it. There’s no further customization you can do to your armor core other than adding an emblem unless you start unlocking them on the battle pass or buy them in the shop. If you buy the battle pass, you’ll immediately unlock the second, epic armor core. Again, you can select which color to make the suit, but you won’t have anything else unlocked for the armor until you start progressing through the battle pass.

halo armor

At this point, the difference between the armor cores seemed clear to me. The basic, rare core is for cosmetics you buy from the shop like any of the pro team-based HCS kits or other a la carte options, while the battle pass rewards can all be applied to the second, epic armor. Then there’s the third, legendary armor core, which I won’t even get into because it seems like it's connected to an upcoming event. If that was how the system worked it wouldn’t be too confusing, but unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

Anytime you buy or earn a kit or piece of armor, you need to keep track of which armor core it can be applied to. If it mentions a specific core, like the Mark V or Mark VII, then that piece can only be applied to that core. If it doesn’t mention a core, then it can apply to either one. The season one battle pass rewards kits and armor pieces for both cores, so just because you unlock something that looks cool it doesn’t mean you can wear it on your current armor. The same applies for purchases from the store, though right now there aren’t any Mark VII-only items, so you don’t have to worry about buying something from the shop that you won’t be able to use without the battle pass core.

halo armor 2

Further complicating things is the split between kits and armor pieces. Kits are full loadouts, like a skin, which can’t be broken up into individual pieces. If you buy a kit with a cool helmet you want to wear, you’re out of luck. The only helmets you can swap on are those that you bought or earned as a single armor piece, and again, only if it's compatible with your armor core.

It’s best to think of cores like characters and kits like skins. Certain characters can only wear specific skins, but some skins can be applied to more than one character. It's a system unlike any other I’ve seen before, and it's taken me all week to really wrap my head around it.

The system isn’t explained very well, but to be fair, the UI is making it a lot harder than it needs to be. Instead of being able to look at an entire core and all the customization in a grid or list, you have to scroll horizontally through a menu that stretches over multiple screens just to see all the armor slots that are available to customize. Certain pieces, like helmet attachments, don’t even show up in this menu. You have to select a specific helmet then open the attachment tab to see the attachments you’ve unlocked. The naming conventions also don’t help. I don’t know what makes the Mark VII the ‘rare’ armor core or what makes the Mark V the ‘epic’ armor core, but I wish they had clearer designations so I could remember which one is which - especially with how often I’m swapping colors and customizing parts on them.

halo armor 3

Ultimately, I would have liked some better customization options at the start so I could familiarize myself with the system a little bit more before I started unlocking things on the battle pass, because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to equip the things I earned. Foolishly, I assumed a helmet was a helmet and I would be able to equip it on my character, but that just isn’t the case. I’d like to see a revamp to the menu that makes it easier to see which parts you have unlocked for each core so that finding and equipping new parts doesn’t have to be such a hassle, and I’d love a way to pick and choose pieces from armor kits from each armor kit I earned. Oh, and if they could make some armors that don’t all look exactly the same, that would be great too.

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