The world is finally getting to jump into Halo Infinite and, for the first time ever in the Halo franchise, we've got a Master Chief adventure that's launching without its co-op campaign component.
It's a real shame, there's nothing better than blasting into a Halo campaign with a few buddies in tow, but unfortunately this time around we're all going to have to wait just a little bit longer to share the fun with friends.
But when is local and online co-op coming to Halo Infinite? Here's what we know so far:
Halo Infinite Co-op Campaign Release Date
So, when can we expect to finally be able to jump into Halo Infinite's co-op mode? Well, there's no word on a specific release date right now but we do know that it's been pushed all the way back to May 2022 at the earliest and should launch to coincide with Season 2 of the game's multiplayer.
Here's what 343 head of creative Joseph Staten had to say to Eurogamer about it:
"Our goal still remains what I said before, which is to ship campaign co-op with Season 2 and Forge with Season 3. But those remain goals. Those remain targets. And we can't commit to any hard dates right now, because as we're seeing with this multiplayer beta, other things might move up in the priority stack for us."
As you can see, 343 Industries has announced that it'll have more information to share on the exact release date of Halo Infinite's co-op mode in January 2022, when they'll also be detailing more about the game's Forge mode and Season 2 of multiplayer, but for now we're just gonna have to make do with single player adventures around Zeta Halo and getting together with our friends as fireteams in the excellent multiplayer suite.
How To Play Halo Infinite Co-op Campaign
Once the co-op portion of Halo Infinite launches, you'll be able to gather up your friends to make a fireteam by using the game's social menu, accessible by pressing the "view" button on your Xbox controller.
When you load into the campaign screen in Halo Infinite you'll find yourself in a lobby with the social menu in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, just bring this up with your "view" button and then scroll to any online friends in your social list and press "invite" to request they join your game.
343 Industries hasn't yet confirmed how many players will be able to play together in co-op mode but we think it's a safe enough bet to assume it'll be a maximum of four people in a fireteam.
You may also be interested in the following Halo Infinite guides: How To Beat Halo Infinite's Bosses, All UNSC Audio Log Locations, All Banished Audio Log Locations, All Forerunner Artifact Locations, All High Value Target Locations which is all available, alongside plenty more, in our Halo Infinite Guides hub.
Are you looking forward to jumping into Halo Infinite's co-op campaign, disappointed that it's been delayed or happy enough to play solo for now? Let us know in the comments.
Comments 8
Don't get me wrong, I get there are reasons why but it's still weird this won't have co-op at launch.
-They got spanked for Halo 5 not having split-screen so hard that Coalition made sure it was in Gears 4/5
-It was "ready" for launch when the game was going to be released last year
-They made a big deal about co-op during the anniversary and our "halo stories" stuff.
Translation: There are too many microtransaction opportunities to just sit on this game any longer. We are shove out now and fix later on our way to the bank.
The multiplayer being free is in no way meant to be good gesture to fans and players. They are just chasing that fortnite money.
Fortnite prints money on cosmetics alone. Why this matters in first person shooter is beyond me. But if people want blow money on that junk? Go for it. Just don't go crying for government assistance when you are trying to or retired.
@abe_hikura Maybe so much was cut to guarantee the 2020 launch that co-op could launch then but the delay brought back some of the cut stuff or changed things which caused problems for co-op.
Pushed back to May at a minimum? At that point, why even bother? Anyone wanting to play Coop will probably have played the game enough over 5+ months. It's bad enough to release a game for which coop is a staple without the coop. Ok, weird year, I get delays. But once you're talking launching it almost half a year (or beyond!) after the game launch..... this doesn't sound like "we delayed it because it has issue still" and sounds more like "We really DGAF about it, but I'm sure we'll shove it in on a feature list eventually."
Even if the campaign proves out really well, to me, the campaign feels like it's very much an afterthought along side MS's new Fortnite competitor. Which probably also explains what happened over 6 years. The game is the F2P online.
@Grumblevolcano I really doubt that "we cut so much we can have a fully working coop in a few months, but now that we've delayed a year we're adding so much to our 10 hour campaign that fully working coop feature we had is wholly fubared now." I think it was BS that they had it working in the first place and "did a Cyberpunk PS4X1" and assumed "how long could it really take to hack it in?" incorrectly. But even that shouldn't take half a year (after already having an extra year) to get it in. After 6 years it takes another year and a half to add coop? Almost an 8 year dev cycle? That's Duke Nukem Forever zone there. I still feel like most of their effort has been on the multiplayer game, which really should have been a separate team, and it's cannibalized the time and attention from campaign. It didn't take a year to redesign Craig. I think Craig actually is in charge of coop.
To me, this makes the release date May 2022. All the rest before is just beta. Too bad because I was originally super hyped but now I won't be joining the party until co-op is there.
@CaptnDave @NEStalgia what makes it even more annoying is the most recent delay doesn't seem to be related to an actual issue with coop, just a schedule thing, extending season 1 because of their xp mess means season 2 and co-op come later.
@abe_hikura Yeah, I really wonder how much of the original delay was because of the campaign vs because of the multiplayer. The campaign so far is great, but the fact that it's a DLC pack for the multiplayer-only game, the fact that things like the item/upgrade crate objects are very clearly a design from multiplayer, the way vehicles move (just like Unreal Tournament) to the fact that the unlockables to hunt down in the campaign are cosmetics for the multiplayer, with the popups in game reminding you you're collecting stuff for the multiplayer game, it's so obvious this is a game designed with the EA/Activision-style "This is an online shooter game, and a campaign is also included" template. It doesn't matter that much, but it's the 343i way with Halo, which drew criticism with 4 & 5 as well. Halo 1-3 were campaigns that also had a multiplayer mode. 3,4 and infinite are online competitive shooters that also have campaigns built from them like a big mod.
It mostly doesn't matter, but it matters when they delayed a supposedly ready to release game a full year, then announce that not all the parts of it will actually be ready at that time, then announce that those parts won't be ready at least until another half-year after, largely because they're just going to sink that time into what should be a different game, the online game.
IDK if it's MS or 343 that can't really decide if they want Halo to be a traditional flagship story driven title, or if they want it to be an F2P Fortnite competitor (or a movie?). They're trying to make it both at once, but definitely never had a clear plan of how to actually manage that, despite a ginormous studio and even more ginormous budget.
I also wonder how much bungling MCC completely and having to spend half of Infinites dev time on trying to fix MCC played a role in all this, too.
Damn even Halo comes out unfinished. What is the game industry coming to when games launch half-assed?
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