‘Halo Infinite”s open-world was scaled back before launch

nme.com:

343 Industries, Halo Infinite‘s open-world map underwent “significant scaling back” before it was released.Speaking to the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences on August 1, 343 Industries’ head of creative Joseph Staten revealed that the studio made a lot of changes and cutbacks to Halo Infinite‘s map (via TechRadar).“The team went through a lot of iterations on scope and biome variety before I joined,” Staten said. “Even after I joined the team, we had to make choices about where to scale back.”Staten added that the team didn’t have the time to create the world they originally envisioned while also delivering on the quality level.

He explained that meeting the detail and world depth players expected wasn’t possible and the studio had to make cuts.“We didn’t end up cutting that much ultimately from the open world, but I know from the original designs there was a pretty significant scaling back of what the team had hoped at one point that they could deliver on,” he continued.“We knew that we needed to truly deliver a quality experience [and] scope our ambitions to make sure that the stuff that we did ship met expectations.”Staten also touched on how the team managed expectations of what an open-world game it would mean to the Halo franchise. “We wanted to free ourselves from a lot of the expectations of open world games, which is why we struggled for a long time in terms of how to talk about it in terms of our marketing promotion because we didn’t want people to get the wrong impression.“We are like an open world game in as much as our game is a lot more open than it used to be,” he added.