Here’s a few light details
So we found out at E3 that Halo Infinite would be doing seasons, but they’re going to be handling them a little differently than some other games. The big gimmick? You can still play “old” battle passes and earn rewards, even after they’ve expired. If this really catches on, it has the chance to inspire the rest of the industry. For now, we have a little bit more info to go on for Halo Infinite season 1 thanks to a new blog update.
Live team design director Ryan Paradis stresses that seasons are the “core container or framework” for how content in Infinite works; and I have to say, with a lack of FOMO out of the gate, things are looking promising. Paradis re-iterates that “roughly every three months,” a new season will kick off, with “a ton of updates, content, events, systems, customizations, and progressions.” Naturally, some of that is cosmetics-related. The team notes that they’re committed to changing and addressing feedback going forward, but of course, like any game, how the first couple of months go will dictate how much the playerbase is willing to wait for potential course corrections.
Paradis says that they’re sticking with three months because “it gives players a good amount of time to experience and explore” each season, and that just because content is coming in a three-month cadence, bug fixes will be evergreen. The team also chimes in that “it’s not a grind like it’s a job,” when ranking up seasons. Here’s a bit more info on that: “Almost every week will mix up the activities that are presented to the player. Certain big weeks will feature events that have new activities and specific reward tracks– free reward tracks. We will provide more details on specific events before launch but be on the lookout for a special event type with specific thematic rewards called a “Fracture.” The Battle Pass and other main vectors will supply canon customization. The Fracture and some events will at times lean into things further afield – like the Yoroi armor shown in the multiplayer trailer.”
While direct content hasn’t been shown yet, we do know that Halo Infinite Season 1 is called “Heroes of Reach.” The team also leaves with a fairly big tease: “At the center of our plans is a goal to deeply root your Multiplayer character in the larger Halo universe and give them a vital, active role in the Halo story moving forward. How exactly we’re going to do this in the Seasons and years ahead… Well, we’re not ready to share details yet.”
If they pull off something like Mass Effect 3‘s lore-based multiplayer, or Fortnite‘s ever-growing storyline-based seasonal tint, it could be really cool. For now, all we really know is that it’s kind of following a battle pass system where you can replay old passes. That could be good enough.
