Last night’s Halo Infinite technical preview livestream brought us an embarrassment of riches when it comes to new information, and new gameplay of the multiplayer portion of the game. The stream offered a first look at multiplayer gameplay on Xbox One, as well as Xbox Series X. For being an iconic Xbox game, Microsoft never actually showed Halo Infinite running on its Xbox consoles, we’ve just been seeing PC gameplay all this time. Though it was brief, the reveal is particularly welcome for Xbox One owners, who worry the most about how the game is going to look and run on the old console. 343 did not say if we were looking at Xbox One X gameplay, or just the base model, which I feel should have been noted. Nevertheless, while it looked to be running fine, the image looked significantly softer and more blurry compared to Xbox Series X and PC, as expected. Speaking of which, the developer also showed off a full match of Slayer on the Live Fire map on Xbox Series X. We got to see the new weapon drop mechanic, a first for Halo, and some really high-level gameplay by one of 343’s pro player consultants. The developer also offered an extensive look at Spartan, vehicle and weapon customisation. The expanded system has its own menu where you really get to admire how good the models look as you mess about with armour and vehicle skins. Then, we got a first look at the game’s extensive customisation options on PC. The list not only includes a wide range of graphical tweaks, gameplay options are even more impressive. The most immediately obvious is the ability to bind multiple keys to the same function, including the new ping function and the button to drop weapons. The FOV slider is one such feature players will be able to tweak, even on Xbox, to say nothing of all the other smaller gameplay tweaks that affect new mechanics in Infinite, and classic Halo elements fans should be familiar with. All in all, this was a confident showing, and it made me a little jealous of people who get to play the tech preview this weekend.
