Halo Infinite's campaign launches today and if the reviews and the reaction to its multiplayer, which launched a month early, are anything to go by, people are really going to enjoy it. Infinite's campaign will likely be different from any of the Halo experiences you've had before. A semi-open world concept allowing you to explore as Master Chief rather than just complete mission after mission. A lot more freedom, but not nearly as much as 343 originally envisioned.
As highlighted by a new report courtesy of Bloomberg, Infinite was originally going to be a lot bigger than the campaign many of you will be playing for the first time today. In fact, around two-thirds of the planned content for the latest Halo game was cut between the summer of 2019 and today's launch. Planning for the game began in 2015 right after the launch of Halo 5, and those initial plans turned out to be a little ambitious.
Developers at 343 wanted Infinite to be completely open world. Inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the team went to work on a Halo game that wasn't linear at all. No completing one mission before moving onto another and then another. A huge world to explore where players could complete its missions in whatever order they choose.
As touched upon above, a little more than a year before Infinite was supposed to launch alongside the Xbox Series X|S, the team creating the game at 343 was in “crisis mode”. The difficult but necessary decision to scrap the open-world idea was made. Even then, getting the scaled-back game finished on time proved to be a problem, hence its eventual launch today more than a year after it was supposed to be here.
Infinite's landing spot in terms of its open world-ness has fallen somewhere between Breath of the Wild and older Halo games. While players can still explore The Ring, missions are separate and do need to be completed in a linear fashion. In fact, it was revealed this week that Infinite's missions are so linear, you can't go back and do them again once you're done unless you create a new save file. The decisions 343 made during Infinite's development also explain why Nintendo is taking so long to reveal anything concrete about Breath of the Wild's sequel.