‘Halo Infinite’ lost development time working on ‘Overwatch’-style multiplayer

After several insiders suggested that Halo Infinite was originally intended to be an Overwatch-style multiplayer game, Bloomberg‘s Jason Schreier has confirmed that 343 Industries was indeed prototyping a hero-based shooter before scrapping it altogether.

Schreier corroborated the rumours in a comment to a post on the “r/GamingLeaksAndRumours” subreddit. Schreier said 343 Industries was working on “various hero-based prototypes” in both player versus player (PvP) and player versus environment (PvE) modes.

This explains why Halo Infinite‘s roadmap looks incredibly sparse, with Season 2 confirmed to last for six months, double the previously announced lifespan for each season.

Rumours suggest that 343 Industries spent half of Halo Infinite‘s development time working on the hero mechanics before deciding it wasn’t working and spending the past two years working on the version of Halo Infinite we see today.

The hero-shooter genre has come under considerable criticism over the past few years by players, as publishers attempt to emulate the success of the likes of Overwatch. Battlefield 2042, for example, was widely lambasted for its inclusion of so-called “Specialists” as opposed to generic soldier models used in previous games.

Ironically, EA reportedly partly blamed the quality of Halo Infinite for the poor reception of Battlefield 2042.

Halo Infinite‘s Season 2 will start on May 3 and will feature two brand new maps as well as new game modes.

The first map, Catalyst, is a symmetrical arena map with suspended catwalks and light bridges connecting all sides of the map together.

The second map, Breaker, is a “pseudo symmetric” Big Team Battle map where each team’s base is made up of space debris.

In other news, Ubisoft is reportedly preparing to be acquired by a private equity firm due to financial struggles.