Halo Infinite Campaign Co-op, Forge Modes Delayed to Post-Launch

Halo Infinite's campaign co-op and Forge modes won't be available at launch, 343 Industries head of creative Joseph Staten confirmed in a dev update video released Friday.

The news comes after the conclusion of Halo Infinite's first tech preview, which gave players the opportunity to help the developers stress test and improve the game's core multiplayer mode. While there weren't any new gameplay clips shown in this month's update video, 343 Industries wanted to be transparent on how progress was going on the road to Halo Infinite's long-awaited launch.

As stated by Staten himself, campaign co-op is up there with multiplayer in terms of being fundamental to the Halo experience, either by way of network or split-screen play.

Meanwhile, Forge has been a regular fixture of the series since Halo 3, allowing players to build their own maps and game modes using the games' existing items and resources.

Unfortunately, both modes will not be available in Halo Infinite on day one as 343 Industries remains "100 percent committed" to releasing the highly anticipated shooter's singleplayer campaign and free-to-play multiplayer this holiday season with the certain level of quality and polish its community expects.

"Unfortunately, as we focused the team for shut down, and really focused on a quality experience for launch, we made the really tough decision to delay shipping campaign co-op for launch," Staten said. "And we also made the tough call to delay shipping Forge past launch as well."

According to Staten, when gauging the two modes' statuses to ship for Xbox and PC, the studio felt that they simply are not going to be ready.

Instead, they'll be released as part of Halo Infinite's seasonal trimester roadmap in 2022.

After Halo Infinite launches with its singleplayer campaign and multiplayer in Season 1, Staten says the team aims to release campaign co-op in Season 2 three months later, and Forge in Season 3 another three months after that.

A large part with the struggles to get the campaign co-op mode ready for day one is that for the first time in series history, Halo Infinite's story mode will feature a semi-open world design. With the open, non-linear take that allows players to progress through the game the way they desire more so than ever before, it makes programming the save systems for co-op that much harder to do.

Halo Infinite is scheduled to launch Holiday 2021 for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC.