For all the potential Halo Infinite has to push the envelope for the franchise, many fans came away from its big showing this week less than blown away. Most of the complaints so far have centered on Halo Infinite’s graphics, but in news that may upset people even more, it turns out they won’t be able to pet any of the animals they’ll come across.
Of the many metrics used to gauge a game’s quality, few are quite as wholesome as whether a game lets players interact with its virtual animals. “Can you pet the dog?” has become a fairly common meme among gamers who can’t resist the charms of adorable in-game creatures, and as such more games are letting players pet the animals, with Ghost of Tsushima being the most recent big example.
The Halo Infinite campaign demo shown at this week's Xbox Games Showcase had fans wondering if the game will follow suit, as it featured plenty of animals wandering around the demo’s open-world area. Unfortunately, an IGN interview with 343 Industries’ Chris Lee and Paul Crocker plainly states, “The only interaction you can have with wildlife on the ring is, uhh, them getting caught in the crossfire. You cannot pet any animals in Halo Infinite.”
As for why the animals are even there, Lee explained that their inclusion is just one of the ways 343 is trying to up the immersion for players exploring the new Halo ring that serves as Infinite’s main location. Another is the inclusion of a day/night cycle that he said was added to “capture that immersion for players that you're on this Forerunner ring.”
From what’s been shown of the game so far, it’s clear that Infinite’s gameplay will be more open than past titles. In addition to larger areas with more objectives to tackle and secrets to discover, players will have more ways to traverse them, as evidenced by Master Chief’s new grappling hook.
However, 343 has recently stated that Infinite isn’t fully open-world, falling more in-between the structure of classic Halo titles and standard open-world games, and Lee reiterated that point to IGN. “This time players will have the freedom to explore the ring. But we are telling a story with a beginning, middle, and end that we want to carry the player through as you go,” he said.
Halo Infinite will launch this holiday season for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
Source: IGN