Developer 343 Industries has shared the Halo Infinite Fall / Winter Roadmap, in addition to providing a half-hour September 2022 update video. The developers have acknowledged that Season 2 has stretched on longer than they had intended, but in recent months, their foremost priority has become “achieving seasonality” for players, meaning that players get “more of what they want” and get it “faster and with more consistency” than they have so far. Along those lines, Forge Mode and full online campaign co-op now have a release date of November 8, 2022 in Halo Infinite — but split-screen local co-op has been canceled.
Via IGN, 343 Industries explained, “In order to improve and accelerate ongoing live service development, and to better address player feedback and quality of life updates, we have reallocated studio resources and are no longer working on local campaign split-screen co-op.” It had been suggested as early as 2017 that this game and future FPS projects would feature split-screen co-op, so it’s unfortunate that 343 Industries has decided it is not worth the resources.
The loss of local split-screen co-op in Halo Infinite stings, a lot, but the arrival of online campaign co-op (and mission replay) and Forge Mode are welcome. Forge Mode will let players build their own sophisticated maps, which should provide a needed boost to the player base. Likewise, two new maps are coming on November 8 that were made in Forge Mode, as a showcase for its power. Then this March, as shown above, Season 3 will deliver Arena and Big Team Battle maps.
If you’ve yet to play Halo Infinite, November is probably the time to finally hop on — unless you’ve been holding out for local split-screen co-op all this time, in which case you can just forget it.
