Halo Infinite was supposed to get its co-op campaign beta (or “flight” as developer 343 Industries prefers to call it) this week. Originally set for July 11, that was corrected to be sometime this week, with 343 community director Brian Jarrard noting some "issues were discovered in our current flight ring and the team is working to address."
There was some hope that the flight would begin on Friday, but there’s still no Halo Infinite co-op. On the bright side, we can at least watch 343 folks playing Infinite co-op in the latest preview posted online.
In the preview, Jarrard teams up with campaign lead designer John Mulkey, campaign lead engineer Isaac Bender, and program manager Ron Brown to showcase how Halo Infinite co-op play will work, a few of the neat features in co-op, and how players can sign up to take part in the upcoming flight.
The key phrase 343 used to describe Halo Infinite’s co-op campaign is “no Spartan left behind.” Each player will retain whatever progress they make in co-op games, whether that be unlocked Skulls or completed missions. After picking a save slot, players will all pile into a single host lobby where the game’s difficulty is decided. Players will also pool together their unlocked Skulls in case they want to throw in some extra modifiers.
Co-op games always start from the player with the least progress, so nobody is able to skip ahead in the campaign by joining someone else’s game. The challenge level of the game also increases automatically with the number of players, adding health to enemies to account for the fact there are now between two and four Master Chiefs running around. Friendly fire was also on during the preview, so Spartans should expect to exercise some trigger discipline.
There’s still no word on when the co-op flight will launch. It’s currently in the certification process, which Jarrard described as a "fluid process." Here’s hoping we get something next week.
In other Halo news, it turns out the war in Ukraine has actually resulted in delays to Halo Infinite’s multiplayer maps. 343 partnered with a Russian studio to help build out new Infinite maps, but they were dropped after Russia invaded Ukraine.