It's been a long road for Microsoft's Halo: Infinite. Originally intended to be the defining exclusive game for the Xbox Series X/S launch late last year, the game's initial demo was largely panned during its reveal last summer. As such, Microsoft and 343 Industries made the difficult decision to delay Halo: Infinite into late 2021, though that added time seems to have been incredibly beneficial for the game as recent reveals have been received much more positively by fans.
In fact, Halo: Infinite is just coming off of its first technical test this past weekend. A small portion of the community was invited to check out a small piece of the multiplayer experience on a two month old version of the game. Even though the content was limited to a bot slayer mode, fans seemed to be enjoying what was there with 343 providing further updates after community milestones were hit throughout the test. While the test itself was pretty limited, 343 doesn't appear to be done with these technical tests.
Following the end of the Halo: Infinite weekend flight test, Community Director Brian Jarrard took to Twitter to thank the community and provide some updates on what's next. Naturally, the studio is currently digging through the data and feedback, though considering that this was an old build of the game, many of the issues and bugs that players came across have already been addressed. After some additional time, 343 plans to update the community with a recap of the event on Halo Waypoint.
His final Tweet gives a bit of hope for players who may have missed out on the first flight by mentioning that the studio is hoping to have at least one additional test in the future. What's more, this technical test would be a bit larger likely in both those invited to try it out as well as other aspects of the Halo: Infinite multiplayer experience. Currently, there's no timeline or hard details to share, but Jarrard reminds players to register on the Halo Waypoint site for a shot at a future test.
One of the highlights from the past weekend's test was the ODST Bot Slayer mode, which was added later in the weekend after the community hit a specific bots slayed milestone. These bots proved to be a big step up from what players had experience previously, exhibiting a new level of intelligence that almost rivaled what an actual human player would do. Players captured footage of all kinds of interesting Halo: Infinite bot behaviors such as crouch shotting, using the environment to stay alive, using the grapple shot to close the gap and melee kill players, and much more.
Halo Infinite is in development for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.