A Taste of Halo: Infinite Comes Early
If you want to go into Halo: Infinite’s campaign spoiler-free, now’s the time to be on lookout. With 343 Industries sending more and more press copies out, the odds of a leak keep growing. As of today, a Germain source – hiding his facecam with an image of a car’s spoiler – has uploaded Halo: Infinite’s first cutscene.
Technically speaking, the cutscene isn’t necessarily from Infinite. It is, obviously, unconfirmed – so while it’s possible that it’s a fake… yeah, it’s kinda hard to fake graphics like that. I won’t be linking the video here, but if you go looking, you’ll know it when you see it.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your perspective), the cutscene doesn’t show much in the way of spoilers for Halo: Infinite’s December 8th release. It’s got plenty of info, but from what it seems, the game’s plot details are reserved for gameplay. Which, to be fair, is a much more interesting way of doing things. Combining gameplay and story like that helps the two feel like one cohesive experience. For Halo, story has always been at the forefront of the game’s brand, and that cohesiveness is valuable.
I shouldn’t need to say this, but: spoilers ahead.
Calling back to the opening of the first Halo title, Infinite starts us off with a space battle near a Halo ring. It’s a very Star-Wars-y sort of engagement, with large capital ships dancing between each other, firing off massive lasers and causing huge explosions for the smaller fighters to dodge around. The camera pans into a UNSC ship, where Master Chief fights off hordes of ex-Covenant baddies. It takes a few moments to show off a few key parts of our green boy’s gear, new grapple shot included, before he’s defeated in hand-to-hand combat. The victor reveals his name: “Atriox”. There’s a bit of dialogue sprinkled throughout, though it’s as German as the guy who spoiled it. You’ll have to find a translation elsewhere. Chief is dropped into a pit, and we fade to black.
It’s a solid intro, to be sure, if a bit incomplete. It’s designed to hook you in and raise the stakes, before dumping all the plot info on top. Big explosions and an initial loss have historically been great ways of doing exactly that.