Halo Infinite is really living up to its name. Six months after developer Halo Studios announced the end of Infinite‘s major content updates, the live-service shooter just got a brand-new mode out of the blue. Well, this is a pleasant surprise.
Released in 2021, Halo Infinite was initially planned as a decade-long, perpetually evolving platform for Halo multiplayer modes. Four years into its run, Halo Studios shifted its development teams to other games: the forthcoming Halo Campaign Evolved remake, plus other “multiple Halo titles in development,” which many fans of the series assume will either pick up the story where Infinite left off, roll out the next iteration of Halo multiplayer (Campaign Evolved won’t have competitive modes), or both. Around the same time, the Halo Championship Series pro-gamer circuit entered hiatus, leading everyone to assume Infinite would enter its life support era.
Well, at least some people at Halo Studios are still working on the game. Halo Studios announced a new mode this week for Infinite called Firefight: Gauntlet. It’s a riff on Firefight, the PvE mode that’s long been a staple of Halo games but was only added to Infinite in 2023. In Firefight: Gauntlet, you and up to three other players have to fight your way through waves of enemies across five different maps (or “combat ranges,” to use the developer’s verbiage). Between each map, you can resupply your ammo, pick up power weapons (though why you would ever leave the Battle Rifle behind is beyond me), or augment yourself with stat boosts on attributes like your damage, speed, or shield regeneration.
No, Firefight: Gauntlet isn’t a major update (various iterations of Firefight have rolled out over the years). And this riff on Firefight, in particular, introduces various elements that aren’t often seen in Halo’s multiplayer modes. Fighting your way through multiple stages and managing stat boosts all the while is rare in Halo’s world, where good strategy is so often about picking up the biggest gun and pointing it at the nearest enemy, and where matches are short and sweet. No 45-minute battle royale matches here. Though the series has dabbled in similar modes in the past, they’ve usually come unofficially via Forge, Halo’s suite of player-creation tools.
Whatever the case, this rules. Infinite receiving a new mode at all, a full six months after major updates supposedly ended, is a sign Halo Infinite really is going to infinity. Maybe it’ll even go beyond.
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