Last Thursday brought the Xbox Games Showcase, and after an hour of games, trailers, and ‘footage representative of game-engine’ being plastered on live-streams, the main event was Halo Infinite.
This was a game that was hyped through Microsoft’s social channels in the seven days previous, and to their credit, didn’t feature any words such as ‘groundbreaking’ and ‘hype’, similar to the ‘Inside Xbox’ event back in May.
But as the ten-minute gameplay-video began, there was something that I just couldn’t put my finger on; something that seemed amiss.
Then it hit me the morning after; next-gen has lost all meaning now. It’s not about new, shiny graphics anymore; it’s about how the hardware can influence the gameplay.
It’s how you play, not how it looks
About an hour after the event finished, tweets started to appear about how much of a downgrade the build of Halo Infinite seemed to be.
A majority of the gaming community have been used to watch a next-gen demo that truly justified what a new console generation means. Halo ironically have justified it before with Halo 2 and its highway-demo. Sony have justified it before with a Killzone demo. But after Thursday’s event, tweets were being posted that mainly followed this.
When you compare Halo 3 and Halo Infinite with the above images; granted, the differences do seem significant. You could argue that the graphics don't look great. But that’s missing the point entirely.
At its core, Halo was never about graphics, it was about the story; the gameplay. It was the satisfaction in making sure that plasma grenade stuck to an Elite. It was about making sure that you got through a mission on Legendary mode and had a damn good time from start to finish.
READ MORE: Will the Halo Infinite demo be playable?
Halo, an Infinite meme
As far as I’m concerned, Halo Infinite could have graphics similar to Minecraft but still be a fantastic game as an Xbox Series X launch title. It’s only issue, to me, would be if the multiplayer mode was to be delayed. A massive part of the franchise is its multiplayer, from it being online in Halo 2, to doing co-op split-screen in Halo 3.
That would be a justified issue; to ship a Halo game without multiplayer at the start would be baffling, and detrimental to a new entry in the series. People want to play together in a co-op mission; they’ve been doing this for years ever since ‘The Master Chief Collection’ arrived on Xbox One.
But regardless, we need to take a step back and remember why we love playing the Halo games; they’re simply fun, and if the graphics aren’t representative of people’s hopes, then, tough.
Halo Infinite is going to have an open-world theme, which reminds me of Metal Gear Solid V; and if you mix that into the SSD with the no-loading feature, then it could be a game that may remind some of Breath Of The Wild. A sprawling world on a Halo ring, subjected to no-loading screens and righting wrongs through many missions.
When you think of Halo Infinite like that, it makes you excited, it makes you want to pre-order it now, and that’s how I feel.
Let the gameplay speak for itself, and just sit back on the discourse about the graphics. Because we all know the inevitable; we’re going to be sharing images on all the social media channels about how fun racing Warthogs is in this open space, and really, that’s all that matters.
READ MORE: The PS5 needs a GamesPass equivalent