and today we're bringing you another #Ask343 video about Halo Infinite.

In this episode we've got four members of the Halo Infinite team  

joining us to talk about our latest Inside Infinite blog.

Before we dive into your questions,

I'll let each of them introduce themselves,

and tell you about their role on Halo Infinite.

Yeah, thanks John. My name is Quinn DelHoyo and I'm the lead

sandbox designer over here on Halo Infinite  

and what that means is I'm just  responsible for overseeing the direction on

all the weapons, vehicles, abilities, equipment, items

all that kind of stuff. all the toys that  

All the toys that the player interacts with.

my name is John Mulkey, I'm the lead world designer, which means  

I run the team that gets the fun of  bringing all the pieces together to create  

the world you're going to explore in Halo Infinite,

so sort of running the team where all the rubber hits the road.

All the efforts of everybody  comes together with us

making sure we're making it shine.

My name is Troy Mashburn, I am the gameplay director on Halo Infinite  

so essentially in charge of gameplay across the entire campaign experience.

I'm the campaign art lead for Halo Infinite,

so a lot of my job revolves around kind of ensuring the  

art quality on the campaign is going well and looking awesome

for both the fans and you know, people who are making the game.

Awesome, it's great to have you here today.

We're gonna be answering a few community questions today.

So, our first question from Twitter is,

"The dynamic day night cycles look fantastic!

can we also expect some degree of dynamic weather?"

Yeah, that's a great question.

Part of our job on the art team and the graphics team  

was to make the ring feel alive, right? And so I'm a big part of kind of a living ecosystem  

is weather at least on our planet and we want to  emulate that on the ring, so we've definitely added  

things like there's a really cool wind system, which is not just visual but also audio.  

We have fog systems — you could call them — that come in to different altitudes, and different times a day  

and different times a day  

We didn't go down the road of having rain  storms, and thunderstorms, and snowstorms,  

and things like that. For our launch this year, but we're really excited about the future  

and what that might mean for things like that.

Gotcha, and yeah day and night is super cool  

so, we're looking forward to getting more  hands-on with all of that.

"The day/night cycle in Infinite looks and sounds amazing!

Is time of day going to affect how enemies respond to your presence

or change types, groups, numbers of enemies depending on what time it is?"

So, when you're moving through the world in the darker periods, you're gonna end up seeing  

more patrols of Phantoms, you know, moving  through the space with searchlights and that  

kind of thing, which is pretty cool,

and it like adds kind of an eerie element to what's going on around you.

You'll probably run into more opportunities where grunts are sleeping on the job,

get the drop on some enemies that way, and then we've done some things to  

try to kind of emphasize honestly just like cool  things that would look good in the dark spaces,  

so we're going with things that have like more  emissives on them and that kind of thing so  

you'll run into like shield jackals and that kind  of thing because when they put the shields on

it looks really cool you know in the dark, and I mean honestly it's simply because it just  

looks really cool and it's really fun to fight  those in that kind of environment.  

We put more coils in place and stuff like that because

they glow and have really cool effects in the darker spaces.

Enemies with personal shields, that kind of stuff.

Those are the kinds of things you'll see as you're going through

the darker areas when it's in the nighttime cycles that is  

That is awesome to hear. I actually didn't know about  a few of those things that you called out,

so looking forward to going back and playing, especially at night,

so I can experience some of that for myself.

Our next question is actually  going to be about wildlife.

"Wildlife was confirmed in the last Inside Infinite update.

What kinds of wildlife can we expect to see?

And will all the wildlife be friendly

or will there be some that are hostile to the player and enemies?"

So, yeah we will be having wildlife  in the environment. We don't have any hostile   

wildlife in the environment. We wanted to focus  the idea on the battle between the Banished and  

the the UNSC forces, Chief you know pushing back  against that so we didn't want to bring in the  

idea that you're you're fighting the the ambient  population of the ring, but we do have them as  

an element that really brings the ring to life, you know? I think people have seen the space  

gophers? I don't know what the franchise name is  that we've gone with those yet, but we call them  

space gophers, lovingly, within the studio. Everybody wants plushies of them, which  

is nice. We have some bird  kind of creatures that are they're flying  

around and stuff like that. Some of those   will actually draw attention to locations. If you  

see birds like circling up in the air you, might go  what's over there check that out that's pretty cool.

And something that I missed when we  talked about day night cycle, some of the   

wildlife that we have, have like a bioluminescence  kind of quality to them and so in the night  

cycles you'll see some of those come out and be more prevalent

which looks really cool in the darker spaces too.

Wow, I'm learning quite a bit  today too, so that's very exciting to hear,

and I'm sure the community is going to love all of that when they get to go

when they get to go hands-on with it too.

I'm going to keep us moving on over to our next question, though.

This one is,

"Is there a plan to bring back dual-wielding in Halo Infinite?"

Currently no, that's that's not in the cards right now, and just to get  

into that a little bit is, whenever you set out  to make a game the size of Halo Infinite there's  

just so many things you can do. I think we have a  very talented team where we can do anything, but  

we can't do everything, and so we wanted  to really focus down on the weapon, the gun play,  

grenades, melee, and where we wanted to put that bet  this time was on equipment, bringing equipment back,

and so right now dual willing isn't  necessarily there, but that's because  

we're trying to focus on everything on  all the other things that we're working on.

Gotcha, so it's more to just keep the team focused  and make sure the stuff that is there is fantastic.

That's right yeah focus on what we have yeah, totally.

Gotcha, thank you for that, I'm gonna keep us moving along to our next question here.

"Will there be playable Elites in Halo Infinite?"

Yeah, okay that's another big question.

You know, similar to the last answer, no we're not currently  

planning on supporting elites as a as a playable  character in Infinite, and the reason is you know  

this is a Master Chief story, and a spartan story,  especially a multiplayer, we want to make sure that  

we focus on how spartans battle against each other, and that it feels fair and it's it's competitive  

it's balanced, and you know we love elites, but  never say never, maybe we'll see that one day but  

right right now that the current plan is you're  going to be playing spartans.

Gotcha, thank you for diving into that a little bit deeper

and giving us that explanation there.

Our next question:

"Will there be weapon upgrades in the campaign?"

I'll say early on we toyed around with that idea

of adding weapon upgrades into the game, being able to, you know, customize your weapons  

and this started leading us down the road of well, you have customized weapons you're going to want  

expanded inventory, and we started really heading  down this rabbit hole and they're all features  

that we liked and we thought were really cool,  but the game started to veer away from what we  

felt like Halo was was all about, and we we decided  instead to take take a different avenue, so there  

are things in the game that you can and  progress. We hinted a little bit earlier about  

equipment items that you're going to be able to  to unlock as you progress through the game, and  

you you'll be able to unlock, or sorry upgrade  these, to improve their capabilities as you go,

and and you're also going to be able to find  and unlock some cool weapon variants, which  

is which is really exciting as you're getting  into these encounters and finding new weapons.

Awesome, that sounds super super cool, and gives you  players something to explore throughout the ring  

and a chance to upgrade equipment.

Our next question: "You all mentioned being able to hold  

multiple pieces of equipment in campaign."

They're referring to our latest Inside Infinite blog.

"Does this ability also appear in multiplayer or is that strictly for campaign?"

The current plan and thinking is that

for the the base multiplayer experience that you need to be  

able to find and scavenge the equipment that you  find, and you can only hold it one at a time, and  

you use it and it's gone and you need to find  another one. That being said, we're trying to — 

we are putting plans in place to allow players to  customize the game via custom game options, like  

Halo's legacy, where you can be able to hold  multiple equipment in the multiplayer custom  

game that you're creating, so that is the current  plan and we'll see if we could make that happen  

Gotcha. That's great news and very exciting  getting to use all the toys in a single match,

so thank you for that.

I'm gonna take us on over  to our next question.

"Is the game world or semi open world?"

I think that when you talk about open world or semi-open world  

there's a lot of, you know, preconceived ideas  of what that means, are you going to be out there,

you know, gathering leather and crafting and  those sorts of things, and that's that's not  

what we're about. We were inspired very early  on from missions like Silent Cartographer from  

Halo: Combat Evolved, and this mission  one of the things that really stuck  

with me is how open it was, how much  player freedom player choice you had to decide  

where you want to go, when to engage. It has, you  know, you can go inside, you can go outside, you're  

driving on your warthog, you're with marines. So, we wanted to when we talk about rebooting or  

the the spiritual reboot of the the franchise, we wanted to capture the essence of this feeling  

of, you know, player choice, and so I think  when we talk about world size, it's good to  

understand how we got to the size of the world  that we have. Now, if you think about missions,

you know, in in game like in Halo 5 there's  on Meridian there's a mission where you're  

you're driving a Scorpion up a road, and it's  cool the space is designed for the Scorpion,

and once you complete that mission you leave the  scorpion behind and you go on to the next mission.

What we started asking ourselves is, you  know, what if you could what if you could keep

that scorpion? What if you could drive that  scorpion to the next mission and use it again?  

And then we started taking that further - what  if instead of going through the front gate of  

that mission, you can drive that scorpion up on  the hill around the back side, and you know, blow  

up that that Wraith that's parked there before  the enemy even knows you're around. And this  

really like struck a chord with us where that's what that experience that we felt in  

Silent Cartographer really was about. It  was about giving me a bunch of toys to play  

with, putting me in this world where I can choose  how and when and where I want to use those toys.  

And approaching the situation how I like, and so going back to the world's size,

we we expanded the world to account for this  kind of combat, to account for Halo combat so  

we have bases that are open, there's a road leading  up to the base, but there's also the hillside  

and you can follow that road down to  another base behind the mountain, but  

it's all still — it's Halo combat. It's  not trying to be anything else, and that's what's  

really exciting to us. It's that expansive  combat area that you really felt like you  

had in Silent Cartographer realized now with the cool next generation consoles.

That's awesome. And I always enjoy playing the game in campaign,

whether I want to roll up with a tank like you mentioned,

or start picking people off from afar  or even just go in guns blazing,

it's always a ton of fun.

Our next question from the community is,

"I know that exploration is a major focus of Infinite, but what I'm curious about is biomes.

What sort of environments if any can we expect on Zeta Halo

aside from the Pacific Northwest-inspired  landscapes we've seen so far?

Yeah, another great question.

So, like I said in the blog we really  focused on the legacy aspect of the game for  

the visuals so Pacific Northwest is our main biome  that was by choice. We got really excited about it.