343 Industries has always struggled with making the Halo franchise its own while retaining what Halo fans love about Bungie's work. Living up to Bungie's legacy hasn't been easy, but 343 is working to find that balance with Halo Infinite. One of the best ways of doing that is, of course, listening to fan feedback from 343's testing of Halo Infinite. That's already paying off as 343 announced Friday that it would be making changes to Halo Infinite's combat sensor.
With Halo Infinite's technical preview playtest, players discovered that a big change had been made to the game's combat sensor/radar. The new combat sensor had some interesting functionality. It only displayed enemies if they were sprinting or shooting, thus giving enemies a newfound level of stealth compared to previous iterations of Halo's combat sensor. The older versions of the Halo motion tracker displayed almost all enemy movements.
343 knew that the new combat sensor would be controversial when it included it in the playtest. However, it wanted that feedback to decide if it was the right decision. The response was, as expected, both very loud and very clear. 343 describes the feedback as most players missing the features of Halo's classic combat sensor. As such, due to the clear message sent by Halo Infinite testers, 343 has reverted the combat sensor to a more traditional form.
To be clear, 343 doesn't say that the new combat sensor will be the exact same as it is in classic Halo games. Rather, it says that the new combat sensor will "feel more like" the old motion sensor. It isn't clear exactly how the new sensor will differ. All that 343 says is that movement is tracked other than crouch-walking.
These changes should go into effect by the time 343 launches its next playtest for Halo Infinite. Unfortunately, that playtest hasn't been announced yet, so it could still be far off. Halo fans can at least rest easy knowing that whenever it arrives, it'll bring a more traditional combat tracker and thus a more authentic-feeling Halo experience.
This situation proves how challenging the situation remains for 343 after all these years. Despite having released two of its own major Halo games, Halo fans still want Halo Infinite to have a combat reader akin to what came in Bungie's five major Halo releases had over a decade ago. As the combat sensor situation shows, 343 understands. Still, it has to be frustrating to want to try new things and know that work may be for naught.
Halo Infinite releases late 2021 on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.