343 commits to monthly Halo Infinite updates, starting this week

343 Industries has said it’s committed to providing “at least” monthly updates on the progress of Halo Infinite, starting this week.

In December the Xbox studio officially pushed Infinite’s release back to fall/autumn 2021 and shared new details via Joseph Staten, the Bungie veteran who took control of Infinite’s campaign development following its much-criticised reveal this summer.

It was the first high-level update on the former Xbox Series X/S launch game since the summer. However, responding to fans on Reddit on Monday, community manager Brian Jarrard insisted the studio was engaging with fans as much as it could.

“Considering we went 12-month stretches of total darkness and our last update was on December 8, I don’t think there’s any cause to worry,” he wrote.

“We also confirmed our Fall release window in that update, so now it’s clear we have some runway ahead of us and some time to go. That said, we’re committed to at least monthly high level updates and the next ‘Inside Infinite’ is coming out this week!”

This month’s Halo Infinite update will feature members of the sandbox team, Jarrard said, who will share insights into their vision for Halo Infinite and the work they’re doing.

“To manage expectations, this won’t have world premier big screenshots or huge things like a date announce, but our goal is to offer our community more context and insights into our team and the game we’re making while we’re all awaiting the larger beats and full marketing machine later this year.”

December’s Halo Infinite development update featured new screenshots and an interview with Infinite’s art leads, who detailed how the game had improved visually since its earlier reveal, which was highly criticised for its lacklustre visuals.

Some of the key areas 343 has improved since last summer are said to include better quality of global illumination, ambient occlusion, shadows, volumetric lighting, sky, and atmosphere, it said.

It also said it’s addressed issues with its GPU-driven rendering and texture streaming solution, which it claimed should mitigate the LOD popping and texture quality issues that were prevalent in the July demo.

“We’re eager to show the progress the team has made in Campaign as soon we can, but we want to make sure we have all the right pieces coming together and this can be tricky with a lot of moving parts and an expansive world of this scope,” wrote Neill Harrison, 343’s director of art management.

“We know everyone is keen to see more and we look forward to sharing more in future updates in the months ahead.”

further reading

2021 Preview: Halo Infinite aims to win over the critics

Xbox's big launch game will arrive a year late, but with improvements over the controversial demo