343 Industries reportedly prototyped hero shooter systems for Halo Infinite 🦋that would have included PvP and PvE systems, before switching to the current style.
It's well-documented by now that Halo Infinite has had a bit of a troubled development cycle, suffering from a year-long delay after its gameplay reveal was poorly received, and then continuing to get flack for its lack of multiplayer content. Although 343 has been pretty open about Infinite's development troubles, a new piece of the puzzle might just have been uncovered.
, 343 Industries once prototyped Halo Infinite's multiplayer with hero shooter mechanics, before swapping back to a more traditional Halo style.
This rumour started yesterday when , "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."
That was then backed up by , where he said, "This was actually cut from my article late last year - yes, 343 spent a while prototyping a hero-based system. I don't remember exactly when they switched to the current version (and the tweet linked here seems exaggerated to the point where it's mostly false) but I can confirm that they were working on various hero-based prototypes. In fact, I think there were both PVP and PVE prototypes built."
Alongside the initial leak from ChrisRGun came an image that is purported to be from Halo Infinite in 2019. It's not clear if the image is legitimate, but it shows a low detail Master Chief in third-person holding a box that is supposed to be a gun called the Eradicator.
It's not clear when 343 Industries switched to the original Halo gameplay style, so it's not clear what part of the game's development this image comes from, if it's legitimate.
