Thread by @haruspis

The campaign of #HaloInfinite having aspects of the Open World™ formula we've become so familiar with in the last generation is actually one of the things I'm LEAST concerned about.

What sets Halo apart from that is Halo's gameplay itself.

Part of why Halo's campaigns remain such an enduringly popular aspect of the series is because of its sandbox; how seamlessly you can transition from on-foot, to vehicular, to airborne combat; and how levels offers a broad variety of memorable, well-crafted encounters.

The Silent Cartographer is the obvious go-to example. You start off with a beach assault, then you get to drive a Warthog with complete freedom on the island to hit certain objectives, you delve into an ancient structure alone, you build up to what feel like 'boss' encounters...

Halo isn't about whether you go into an encounter stealthily or guns blazing, it's about how you move around these spaces and use the toys in the sandbox while asking yourself "How can I make the most of my 30 seconds of fun?" - a term coined by Jaime Griesemer.

Enemies don't have hitscan weapons or unavoidable attacks, you're dodging plasma bolts and moving in close to land a perfect backsmack on that Elite as he telegraphs a melee. The joy of Halo's gameplay is building that visual literacy in parsing a lot of information very quickly.

And the enemies themselves are part of what makes Halo's combat great. Halo 1 mines more encounter variety from how it mixes and matches its units (Grunts, Jackals, Elites, and Hunters - the smallest enemy roster of the series) than most campaigns I've played in the last decade.

Going into Halo Infinite, I don't think we're going to see a lot of the familiar issues that open world design tropes have caused. I'd wager we're NOT going to have a map filled with innumerable icon checklists, slow-walk 'follow' sections, menial fetch quests and minigames, etc.

Many open world games struggle to justify their activities because they're filling the world with nebulous 'Stuff To Do' as shallow incentives, but the inherent advantage that Halo has at its best is that the combat itself - those '30 seconds of fun' - *is itself the reward.*

So yeah, we'll have bases to fast-travel between and call in weapons and vehicles (not dissimilar from ODST's supply caches), as well as side missions like blowing up Banished refineries and rescuing captured Marines...

...but if 343's done it right, these things will have been crafted not as checklist activities, but to perpetuate the core fun of Halo's sandbox gameplay.

Yesterday's campaign showcase looked very promising, especially when Chief rescues the Marines and drives them off a cliff.

You're not rescuing the Marine prisoners because objective text says you need to rescue 4/4 to get a bonus XP reward. You're rescuing them because you've come across an opportunity to get some passengers for your Warthog so you can kill more aliens heading to your next objective.

Statements about how these kinds of games offer you so much Freedom™ to Explore™ and Play Your Way™ have obviously become rote in marketing, and I think a lot of that fatigue comes from many open world games failing to make the act of traversal itself a joy.

The recent Spider-Man games have been a stand-out exception to that. Like, hell yeah I'll catch a dozen pigeons because swinging through the city is itself fun as fuck!

It's much the same with Halo, where you're given the tools and toys to 'make the fun happen' yourself.