This past week, excitement has been growing for 343 Industries to announce the first details about Halo Infinite's forthcoming technical test. It will be the start of the process ultimately leading to larger and larger Halo Infinite test flights and potentially even an open beta, before arriving at the game's launch later this year. Now 343 has dropped its Inside Infinite blog, confirming a variety of exciting details about its planned Halo Infinite technical preview.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the Inside Infinite blog on the upcoming technical preview is the revelation that it will be focused on bots. Insiders who are invited to the Halo Infinite technical preview will be testing several key areas. The main focus will be on Arena gameplay vs. Bots, with the Bot Arena playlist offering 4 players vs. 4 bots on Halo Infinite's Arena maps. Three maps in specific are going to be used in this Bot Slayer playlist, with those being Bazaar, Recharge, and Live Fire.
343 explains that Bot gameplay will be a way for Insiders to familiarize themselves with Halo Infinite's gameplay. That said, 343 says that these Bots have "quirks" that should keep things interesting, which is a part of why they need testing. 343 plans to keep things fresh from day to day, too, with daily content plans that will change over the course of testing. All 343 is willing to say about this for now is that it will "start things off slow" but then later it plans to "crank things up" to provide some fun challenge and variety. However, the start date for said test has yet to be announced.
5v5 Bot Slayer isn't all that Halo Infinite Insiders will have access to, however. They'll also be able to try Halo Infinite's Academy Weapon Drills. 12 different weapons will be available in these Weapon Drills, including the BR 75, S7 Sniper, CQS48 Bulldog, Ravager, and more. Each Weapon Drill has four levels of difficulty featuring moving Bots, as well as a star rating system based on damage dealt. Needless to say, players will be able to prove their worth in the technical preview's leaderboards.
Further testing will be done on Halo Infinite's menus and battle pass system, which will be open to players. Insiders invited to the Technical Preview will be granted some free in-game credits, dubbed cR, which they can use to purchase different battle passes and customizations available in the Halo Infinite shop. Again, the intent is to test these systems, but also have some fun.
343 wants to make it explicitly clear that this is a test. 343 feels like it's past the point of calling it an alpha, but that it isn't as robustly polished as it wants the game to be. As such, this test is referred to as a technical preview, instead, as the test's purpose is largely technical in nature. Player feedback will be a priority. For those Halo Insiders who don't receive an invite, whenever invites go out, there will be more tests in the future.
Halo Infinite releases later this year on PC and Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.