HALO INFINITE

What's Going On With Halo?

⏱ Estimated Read Time: 6 minutes

Yo, it’s been a minute since we last talked about Halo, and things are in an interesting place. I’m going to be honest with you, when I released that “Halo is Not Dead” video almost a year ago, I was pretty optimistic about the direction Halo was going. Everything was trending up, things just kept getting better and better. But lately, especially since the seasonality dropped and content updates have slowed, things just started feeling a little slower.

And I’m not saying this because I hate the game. I still enjoy it! When I have half an hour or an hour to play something, I usually jump on Halo. I still enjoy my time playing multiplayer ranked, but overall, that initial optimism that this game was just getting better and better has dwindled a bit.

So, what’s changed since we made that video? Well, they dropped Seasons. I don’t think dropping Seasons itself was a big deal, as long as updates kept coming. Call it whatever you want, as long as updates are coming, we’re good. But the content updates still seem few and far between. Easy Anti-Cheat is more like “easy cheat” because a lot of cheaters are coming in at the higher ranks, blatantly cheating with flying and instant teleportation. It’s wild.

They did introduce a new network model, which for the most part has been great for me. I’m getting a lot more hits than I normally was. But there are the odd games where nothing seems to connect, and I’m just a dummy. Apart from that, they’ve done playlist updates, but the player count is probably at the lowest it’s ever been. Now, I know Steam Charts aren’t inclusive of all players; let’s not get into that debate. A lot of players are playing on Xbox and Game Pass, but I think it’s still a proportional representation of what’s going on with Halo across console and stores. So, the Steam Charts being as low as they’ve been is not promising.

But they did release CU32 – Content Update 32 – which is why I held off on making this video. They teased the new content coming out at the end of the month, and for the most part, they addressed some main criticisms. They added the Exchange, a way to earn in-game credits that you can use to buy things from the store, albeit not premium items. It’s almost like you can earn credits to buy stuff from the clearance bin of the store using the stuff you work towards. Instead of fluffing up season passes with XP multipliers and stickers, you earn Spartan points that you can use in the Exchange.

A lot of what’s going to be in the Exchange is just going to be clearance stuff. They also introduced a new Operation Pass, another 20-tier mini battle pass with a Banished theme. I think that’s dope. I like doing those things. They tuned the sandbox, which is cool and should change things up a little bit. They introduced a bunch of Forge updates. I’m not a Forger, so how much that means to me is little. I don’t really play custom game modes; I just play whatever gets into the main playlist. Hopefully, we get some cooler maps looking in the playlist, which has been one of the criticisms that Halo’s been facing. The new ranked maps are very bland. The Forgers say, “Well, that was my artistic choice,” which is cool, but how come we can’t get some prettier and cooler maps in ranked, also?

They added a Big Team Battle Heavies refresh. I’ve never played Heavies, so it’s cool that someone’s getting something they like. What hasn’t changed? They introduced one new ranked map, but it seems like since Season 1, we’re now going into almost Season 7, and the ranked map rotation is just so slow. We get these new maps every now and then, but when we’re playing ranked, we seem to still be getting a lot of the old maps. Someone suggested removing the old maps and keeping it feeling fresh, then reintroducing an old one every now and then, so people are like, “Oh yeah, I remember this map!” But they haven’t really done that.

Guns are slow. I think the only new gun we’ve gotten is the Bandit Evo. There are so many old guns they could bring back. The general consensus around Halo is that they’re updating and making changes, but it’s really slow. It’s a drip feed, and you wonder how much of the studio is still committed to Halo. We had the whole “Halo’s Moon Unreal” conversation almost two years ago now. Where are they going with that? Is a new game coming? Is it going to be campaign heavy, or just a rework on the multiplayer side? Who knows? How far is that engine implementation? 343 has been leaning heavy on Forgers, and I did that video a while back on the five things we want to see come to Halo Infinite, and one of my biggest things was paying Forgers. Lately, that’s become a huge thing in the community, where a lot of Forge work isn’t making it into playlists.

343 hired a third-party studio to make Forge maps. It’s like, you have this community who’s doing crazy work; why can’t they get paid? Maybe there are legalities and technicalities with accounting, and it’s easier to just hire a third-party company than deal with contracting work to existing Forgers. But I feel like Microsoft and 343 are big enough and have the resources to figure that out. It’d be nice to see.

Overall, I don’t know if the game’s dead. I don’t know what dead is for a game. As long as you’re enjoying it, which I still kind of do. But none of my friends want to hop on, so that’s kind of dead. Playing eights is still fun, but even in the eight league that I’m in, I constantly see messages for people looking for subs, and teams dropping out. The general interest in Halo, I think, is pretty low right now, which is kind of sad considering the game is still one of my favorite games to play.

That’s all I got to say on that. I’m hoping Halo gets better. I’m hoping that there’s an ace up their sleeve when it comes to Halo that they’re just waiting to drop on us. Xbox game showcase is coming up soon. I hope Halo is a big part of that. If not, it is what it is, man. We just got to enjoy what we enjoy, and there are a lot of other games out there to play right now, so I’m not overly sad, but I am a little bit sad. Anyways, till the next one. Let me know what you guys think. Peace.

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updated_at 31-07-2025
Ai Disclosure: The above posts were transcribed using AI tools. Some language may not have been accurately transcribed.
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