Clippy, also known as Clippit, has invaded Halo Infinite. The infamous Microsoft Office “Intelligent” assistant was added to the game yesterday as a gun charm and nameplate as part of the new content that arrived with Season 2. In case you’re not old enough to remember the terrible reign of Clippy, it was an animated paperclip that Microsoft included as part of Microsoft Office. Although Microsoft called it an “intelligent user interface,” Clippy constantly interrupted whatever it was you were doing with asinine suggestions that often had nothing to do with the task at hand. Clippy was so intrusive and annoying that he was reviled not only by Microsoft’s customers but also by Microsoft’s employees. Comedians, comics, and internet videos all lambasted Clippy, and there were entire informative websites devoted entirely to teaching users how to disable Clippy. Clippy came as part of a set of animated helpers, which included a robot, a cat, a caricature of Einstein, and a dog wearing a cape, but Clippy was the default, and nobody cared enough about the feature to figure out how to change Clippy into any of the alternate options. Clippy stuck around from MS Office 97 to Office 2000, but Microsoft mercifully disabled Clippy by default starting in Office XP.
Clippy was eventually replaced by Cortana as Microsoft’s intelligent assistant, so now that Clippy has arrived in Halo Infinite, it’s sort of like everything has gone full circle. A vicious, annoying circle.
If you want to bring the same level of annoyance to your opponents, equip Clippy in your loadout. Even if you don’t get that many kills, you’ll at least give your opponents PTSD.
In other Infinite news, 343 Industries is considering ways to replace the Armour Core system. Head of design Jerry Hook admitted that the team "didn't realize it'd be as bad as it was," and are looking to "move away completely from the core system." This will come as welcome news to most players, although we should caution those players that it might be some time before we see its replacement.