343 Industries surprise launched Halo Infinite's multiplayer last week and if you're anything like the rest of us, you haven't stopped playing it since. Well, other than when you've had to stop to eat, sleep, and use the bathroom. What a pain all that palaver is. That also means no matter how much you may not want to, you will have had to close Infinite a fair few times and reopen it whenever you're well-rested, well-fed, and ready to do battle once again.
That means by now, you will have been forced to sit through that 20-second unskippable opening video quite a few times. The thing is, if you're playing Infinite on Steam, that video which plays while the game is loading isn't technically unskippable. You can access the game's files and delete it which means the main menu appears as soon as the game is loaded and ready to go. That usually takes a lot less than 20 seconds depending on your PC.
The trick appears to have been discovered by Jason Lamb. However, Lamb didn't stop at just deleting Infinite's loading video, they replaced it. “Did you know the Halo Infinite loading screen is just a video? An easily replaceable video?” Lamb tweeted, accompanied with what they have chosen to switch out the video for.
Now every time Lamb fires up Infinite they are greeted with Shrek bursting forth from his outhouse and the first few bars of Smash Mouth's All-Star. Replacing the loading screen with a short Shrek clip will be hard to beat, but you can switch it out for whatever you want. You can find the video by heading to SteamLibrary, steamapps, common, Halo Infinite, and then videos. You can then replace it with whatever you like. All you need to do is make sure it has the same name, Startup_Sequence_Loading.mp4, to make sure it plays.
Rather than delete the original video entirely, it's probably worth moving it or at least keeping a copy. While even a few people at 343 will likely find the Shrek clip above amusing should they see it, it might not sit well with the studio and could be fixed in a future patch. If that leads to Infinite not working unless the original loading video is in place and you no longer have it, you could find yourselves in a spot of bother.