We're still waiting on Halo Infinite's multiplayer launch date, but in the meantime, we're getting precious new details from 343 Industries' lead multiplayer designer, Andrew Witts, who recently was featured on 343's blog as an employee spotlight.
As lead multiplayer designer, everything that goes into Halo Infinite's free-to-play multiplayer game mode passes by his desk and he has a hand in shaping what features will be present in Infinite's multiplayer. One of the big features coming to Infinite is familiar to fans of the shooter genre: an Apex Legends-style Ping system.
"My team also gets to work on awesome MP systems like Weapon Spawners, voice-over messaging systems such as the Classic Halo Announcer and new Personal AI, and the Mark System, which is a feature where players can mark a spot in the world that lets their teammates know vital information, like an enemy position or weapon location," Witts said in his interview.
The announcer system is certainly cool and opens the door to celebrity voices providing you with hilarious in-game narration, but it’s the ping system that should really set your shooter heart aflutter. Introduced in Apex Legends and quickly copied by basically every multiplayer shooter under the sun, pinging lets players quickly communicate to teammates regarding objectives, enemies, or even just a sweet new gun they could pick up.
Related: Halo Infinite's Multiplayer Preview Is "Creeping Closer And Closer"
Another thing Witts mentioned was the Weapon Spawners, which although not unique to Halo Infinite or even the Halo franchise in general, are still a great feature for new players to learn how to arm themselves in a fast and frenetic multiplayer environment.
“We put the weapon racks on the walls because we wanted to develop a visual language around scavenging in the game so that players can make split-second decisions around where to find a weapon,” explained Witts. “Map knowledge is still an important skill to maintain but we wanted to find a way to ease the burden of developing that knowledge by creating assets that pop off the environment enough that you can make quick decisions on what item you want to fight for next."
To get the lowdown on everything Halo Infinite, check out our guide here for everything we know so far. Halo Infinite is coming to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC later this year.
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