Players new to Halo won't be properly equipped to appreciate much of the drama at the heart of Infinite's overarching narrative, while series veterans will likely lament the absence of so many supporting characters – many of whom have become so intrinsic to the feel of the Halo universe. It's in this stranglehold where Halo Infinite struggles under the weight of its own legacy. 343 has made a concerted effort to strip Halo down to its essentials, to make it more manageable for players coming in without two decades of lore committed to memory: there's a super soldier to control, a hostile alien world to tame, and a blue-hued hologram to befriend. Infinite is set 18-months after the devastating conclusion to Halo 5: Guardians and, aside from a handful of collectible audio logs detailing life aboard the UNSC Infinity, it isn't all that interested in exploring what happened in the interim. Master Chief is tasked with getting planetside and battling back the Banished frontline, fighting for inches of ground as he chases the ghosts of his past. Halo Infinite kicks off with the war against the Banished already lost, with the loose coalition of Covenant exiles already entrenched on Zeta Halo – having spent six months steadily pulling apart the last remnants of the UNSC as it works to piece a fractured Installation 07 back together again. And tying it all together is a free-to-play multiplayer component which pulls players across three platforms into one shared, competitive arena. It's a truly expansive experience too, shoving Spartan-117 out of the small sandboxes he's been so comfortable playing in for all these years to encourage exploration of the entire playground. Halo Infinite is a spirited return to the familiar fundamentals that underpinned Combat Evolved, reclaiming a sense of discovery that, while once at the heart of Halo, has gradually withered over time. In Halo Infinite, the response to such a sustained campaign of criticism is one of deliberate defiance.

Halo 4 was too thematically familiar, Halo 5: Guardians too mechanically expansive, and the scars left by the corrosive launch of The Master Chief Collection never healed over for many in the community. While 343 may have been at the helm of this series for a decade now, it never felt as if the studio truly understood what it had in its hands.

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