Spartans in Halo have always been mysterious figures. I know they’re just chemically enhanced orphans hurled into a suit of power armour, but when you put aside the ethical quandaries of their existence, Master Chief and company have always possessed a larger than life presence that didn’t require a voice to make themselves known. John-117 is a man of few words, only piping up about things critical to the mission or when his blue robot girlfriend is about to croak it. All moments where a chat is warranted, but beyond this, his silence is indicative of his reputation, a man who shoots first and asks questions later in the service of saving mankind.
I understand 343 Industries’ eagerness to humanise Master Chief, with the studio offering a deeper glimpse at a man who has spent his career hidden beneath a helmet. It has done a wonderful job of this, turning a once faceless space marine into a hero with motivations we can directly empathise with. His relationship with Cortana is heartfelt, the bond between them strengthened by the trauma that defines how they’ve come to exist in this world and live for conflict that never ceases to end. The mystery still remains, and Halo Infinite seems set to once again delve into the personal stakes of Chief’s character while ensuring he remains a distant figure of leadership we can easily project ourselves onto. Multiplayer is a different story though, and vocal Spartans only serve to dirty a formula that was far cleaner when our online avatars kept their mouths shut.
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A healthy chunk of my weekend was spent with the Halo Infinite Technical Test, a brief snippet of multiplayer action that allowed me and thousands of others to battle against bots on a trio of maps. It was a fairly muted affair, used as a way to gather feedback and analyse the game in action as opposed to providing players with a concrete picture of the full product. In that context, it was a massive success, although there’s a few small niggles I want to address that make this evolution of the classic series a bit of a misstep. The gunplay is rad, feeling like a perfect mixture of old and new that is fully aware of 343’s individual successes while staying true to the formula that Bungie helped define. No issues there – my real beef is with the way my teammates and I wouldn’t shut the hell up during a firefight.
Having grown up with the original trilogy, I remember Halo multiplayer being a silent experience with the exception of explosions, gunfire, Kilimanjaros, and the comical screams of violence that accompanied each death. It was deliberately simple, understanding players were smart enough to recognise audio cues and environmental markers without overwhelming them when it came to spotting opponents and navigating each map. The narrator did much of the talking, providing updates on equipment drops and the state of the scoreboard as we ran around Last Resort in search of foes to headshot with the battle rifle. While it has the best of intentions, Halo Infinite complicates things, with Spartans that seem eager to crack wise and give away their position as a way to lend proceedings an extra dose of personality. It misses the mark, taking investment away from avatars that are meant to be our own. Ironically, giving them a voice serves to make them more generic, harder to relate to than the silent spectres we used to customise back in the day.
I also dipped into Halo 5: Guardians over the weekend and noticed a similar problem, so it’s a shame 343 Industries didn’t recognise its negative impact to change it up for Infinite. Talkative teammates are likely here to serve as added situational awareness, helping players attach themselves to the unfolding action in a more concrete way, but the tone in which these exchanges are expressed makes all the Spartans appear as secondary school kids ready to deck each other on a lunch break instead of hardened soldiers fighting for victory. Tonally, it’s all over the place, and takes me out of the moment far more than it pulls me in, and that’s a problem.
I might be overreacting, but with Halo Infinite pitching itself as a return to the glory days of Combat Evolved, it feels unusual to carry over one of multiplayer’s biggest modern flaws into this new vision. Maybe there will be an option to turn them off in the full release, since I’m not here for power armoured frat boys throwing plasma grenades all over the shop.
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