Post Script
What does the battle pass controversy really mean for Halo Infinite’s multiplayer?
Halo has always been a game of two halves, and the relative quality of both has aligned perfectly just twice in its 20-year history. But never has that been more true than in the case of Halo Infinite, with the campaign and multiplayer games existing within the same executable but being sold separately, the former your usual paid-for (or, more likely, accessed-throughGame-Pass) experience, the latter making the leap into free-to-play, with a few hooks – notably the cosmetics that are only accessible by exploring Zeta’s nooks and crannies – to draw players from one to the other.
Perhaps even more strikingly, they released on different dates. Not a year apart – a plan that 343’s Joseph Staten recently told us was considered when the game was delayed last year – but separated by a few weeks, multiplayer arriving in time for Combat Evolved’s birthday. It’s fairly clear that singleplayer is coming in hot, with a faint whiff of minimal viable product about its campaign and room clearly being left for expansions. But the multiplayer – “a smaller nut to crack,” in Staten’s words – has had many months to cool, and it arrives in almost perfect shape. Almost.
One strange side effect of multiplayer’s early arrival is that, in the days leading up to release, the main discussion around Halo Infinite has been focused not on anticipation for the full thing, or even relief that multiplayer has the fundamentals so tightly nailed down, but rather on the failings of its battle pass. And while we might suggest that this is the least interesting thing about the game, the stark contrast between Infinite’s progression system and prey much every other part of its beautifully honed multiplayer suite is remarkable. But is it really a problem?
The first thing to consider is exactly what is on offer here. Infinite’s seasonal battle pass has 100 tiers. For players who buy in, each level-up is rewarded with a cosmetic to be equipped to their Spartan: armour paints, visor tints and, most notoriously, individual shoulder pads. For those not willing to shell out, tiers are either empty or offer ways of levelling up more quickly – something that’s arguably pointless if all you’re earning is more XP boosts. It’s not exactly generous, especially for an opening gambit that is meant to convince players to stick around until the next season, but nothing disastrous.
More contentious is how you move between these tiers. XP is awarded at the end of each match, with a flat reward for simply completing a game, win or lose. That amount (with exceptions we’ll get to shortly) is 100XP, a tenth of what it needed to reach the next level. It’s a tiny amount that makes perfect sense, from a certain perspective. After all, if the reward is unconditional, it can’t be big enough that even perpetual losers will fly through the tiers. It’s not quite as simple as this, with 343 responding to the backlash with the introduction of an XP bonus for your first few matches of the day: a perfectly reasonable compromise.
More baffling – and harder to imagine how 343 will fix – is the handling of weekly challenges, which enable you to earn bonus XP by achieving certain feats: get so many kills with this weapon, complete so many matches of this variety, and so on. Again, you can understand the logic: encourage players to try new things with an incentive for leaving their comfort zones. This is essentially what Destiny, Halo’s cousin once removed, has been doing for years, and it’s worked rather well over there. But the vital difference is that here you (thankfully) don’t have control over your loadout, or what activities you participate in. Complete a match of Oddball? Sounds good, except matchmaking hasn’t served one up for 20 rounds.
We want desperately not to care about all this. The rewards are largely rubbish, especially if you’re not paying, and how many times have we railed against meaningless numbers-go-up design in videogames? But the battle pass XP bar is the first thing you see after a match ends, and when those numbers don’t go up, it’s hard not to feel like you’re doing something wrong, even if you won the match.
This mindset even seeps into matches. Passing a weapon on the racks, we remember spotting it in the challenge list and pick it up, despite knowing it’s not the best option tactically. This is, arguably, the challenges doing their job, and we’ll admit to an extra burst of satisfaction to every Commando headshot knowing it’s on today’s list. But it also adds an extra layer of mental noise to a game, with the addition of grapples and shields, that already demands full attention to every tool at your disposal – too many times, we die refusing to drop our assault rifle for that final crack to an opponent’s skull, because it would have helped fill a bar that would earn us nothing of value.
It’s clear, then, that multiplayer’s extra year of development was not spent prioritising the design of its battle pass. Good, frankly. It’s hard to imagine how more extrinsically rewarding progression could have been implemented without comprising the game’s intrinsic pleasures. And if this – along with the move to free-toplay – is Halo’s one concession to modern shooter design, we’re relieved. In play, it’s gloriously oldfashioned, a unique flavour that’s been sorely missed in recent years. And so, coming back yet again for just one more match, we thank our lucky stars that Infinite offers nothing but slightly naff cosmetics, and try our hardest not to think about that XP bar too much.
When the numbers don’t go up, it’s hard not to feel like you’re doing something wrong, even if you won
Alx Preston’s health issues are well documented, not least by his previous game. If Hyper Light Drifter’s story was about disease, Solar Ash seems to touch upon treatment – those syringe-like protrusions on Dregs and Remnants suggest a painful reminder of what recovery can entail. Its storytelling, however, veers between saying too much and too little. Sure, Drifter’s tale could feel opaque at times, but its wordless narrative, heavy on visual metaphor, left room for player interpretation. Solar Ash’s story seems purposely vague until it suddenly isn’t; interjections and observations from Rei and various NPCs puncture the atmosphere of mystery, while the identity of Echo (a huge, almost deific figure who meets with Rei between Remnant encounters, and ‘rewards’ her by destroying part of her shield) is rather heavily telegraphed.