Halo Infinite’s delay to 2021 was widely publicised, what was originally slated as an Xbox Series X and S launch title was given more time in the order to do all of that oven stuff. In our big interview with 343 Industries we go over how that extra time was spent, what it means for Halo to go “open-world” and some of the very cool stuff gone into enemy design and AI.

A snippet.

Steve Dyck: “Tactics wise, the player's ability to just kind of attack bases and engage the way they want, whether they grapple over a wall or bring a vehicle, we had to make sure on the AI side they're able to account for these types of things. We added a lot of behaviours around that stuff, we rebuilt the cover system from the ground up, enemy's now have the ability to grab weapons off of racks. So if you're sniping from a distance, enemies can go and grab a longer range weapon. If you're flying around in a vehicle they can go and grab a shock weapon and try to EMP you out of the sky.”

“We also had to account for just these big spaces that could quickly become overwhelming and not fun for the player if we had every enemy immediately target Master Chief. You'd be dead in a hurry and you wouldn't feel like a super soldier anymore. Under the hood there's a lot of things going on around enemies choosing new firing points, things like bursts delays and cool-downs on weapons. Making enemies visually reload and stuff like that. Making sure there’s more breaks so they’re not just firing at you all the time.”

Our Full Halo Infinite Interview