It may not look that way right now but Halo Infinite was once being developed as a hero shooter with Overwatch-like gameplay systems.
Taking to Twitter on the weekend, YouTuber Chris Ray Gun criticized developer 343 Industries for spending most of its budget on creating Halo Infinite as “an Overwatch clone” that had to be scrapped in the final two years of release because its hero-based systems were just not working right.
It would be crazy if it came out one day that a lot of the budget went to an Overwatch clone that they spent half of the dev time making before realizing it wasn’t working and were forced to make this version of Infinite in the last two years of development.
That’d be nuts.
— Chris Ray Gun 🇵🇷 (@ChrisRGun) April 22, 2022
Several more came forward afterward to make similar claims about former creative director Tim Longo pushing 343 Industries to create Halo Infinite as a hero shooter. Some assets showing grapple hook abilities were also shared.
Dev friend told me years ago Tim Longo was pushing for a hero shooter.
— cheato (@Gamecheat13) April 23, 2022
Halo Infinite in 2019#haloinfinite pic.twitter.com/l6qtZeC56y
— Delta Archive (@DeltaArchive) April 12, 2022
Taking to Reddit for clarification, Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier confirmed that 343 Industries was indeed working on “various hero-based prototypes” during the early development stages of Halo Infinite. There were Overwatch-like protyptyes built for both PvP and PvE.
Schreier, however, was fairly certain that 343 Industries did not switch to the current Halo Infinite version in the last couple of years of development. He marked the claim of the developer scrambling in the final years to reforge the game as “mostly false.”
Unlike previous games in the franchise, Halo Infinite was released without a cooperative mode for its single-player campaign. 343 Industries stated last month that it needed “more time” to finish the co-op modes but on the weekend, confirmed that cooperative play will become available in August.
