Podtacular: The Unofficial Halo Universe Podcast

Dust Storm and Godzilla T are joined by two of Podtacular’s Patreon supporters: PensHalo and Confal. As long time members of the Podtacular community, they share a lot of the same Halo interests as our hosts. With the recent changes to 343 and the upcoming season, we get their thoughts on what’s coming up for Halo.

In a last minute surprise before season 3 comes to Halo Infinite next month, 343 has introduced the Community Collection playlist, bringing community Forged content to Matchmaking in an evergreen playlist that will be continuously updated. After a lot of community outcry from not enough content since launch, this is a welcomed addition to the online experience. We also received the HCS Season 2 roadmap (hope you live near Texas), a new Halo Waypoint Chronicle, and more!

According to a recent Bloomberg report, 343 Industries is “all but starting from scratch” when it comes to the future of the Halo franchise, with now over more than 90 confirmed departures from 343 along with additional contractors, it seems like the development of Halo is undergoing large restructuring for the immediate plans of Infinite’s live service and the next gaming experiences. Rumors involve the next experience expanding on the alleged Tatanka battle royale type mode being more fleshed out into a separate title on the Unreal engine to match 343’s new direction with Unreal. While there’s cause for uncertainty, this isn’t the first time we’ve had a major shift in the direction of Halo. For those sticking around we’re along for the ride with you.

Halo is staying in house with 343 industries as Pierre Hintze announced last week after more than 60 full-time employees were let go, but with that many people gone, there’s sure to be some slowdown of certain development and support at the studio. We know the roadmap for Halo Infinite has been laid out for a few more seasons at least with Season 3 still on target to release March 7th, but past that, what does the future of Halo Infinite look like? We’re still living in some uncertainty in the aftermath of this loss and we’ll probably never know the full extent of the impact, but there will be one regardless. That’s what we’re talking about in this episode.

Hard news hits this week as a result of Microsoft letting go 10,000 employees over the next six months, starting this week where over 60 343 employees, mostly from the campaign team, were let go. This sudden announcement has a lot of us in shock and anxious about the future of Halo, let alone the impact this has on all the folks who suddenly find themselves without a job. We hope all our friends who were let go are able to bounce back.

The Halo Championship Series for Season 2 is kicking off in Charlotte, NC in February as balance changes and new maps enter in for the latest competitive Halo experience. We also take a look at the next two missions in our Halo Infinite campaign discussions: Spire and Pelican Down. Got a topic for us to discuss, want to provide your input to our next topic? Hop in our Discord: https://podtacular.com/discord

It’s been a quiet few weeks as 343 is finally starting to come back from the holidays. This gives us a chance to take some time to reflect on the first year of Halo Infinite and the roadmap that we know of so far. Overall community vibes are better now than they were at launch, but there’s still a fair amount of the community that still feels there’s a lack of fresh content to keep things interesting. We’ve got your responses to talk through this episode.

We draw upon the close of 2022 and a year of Halo Infinite. After a tumultuous launch for Halo Infinite, we have Campaign Co-op, Forge, Custom Games Browser and a whole lot of quality of life improvements that we’ve received. Competitive Halo is alive and thriving and we continue to see some amazing community content. We appreciate everyone that continues to listen and are looking forward to what 2023 brings us.

Halo Infinite has now been out for a year and through the ups and downs, it’s safe to say we’re finally at a point where we’d consider it a full game with Forge, Campaign Co-op and the surprise drop of the Customs Game Browser. This is probably the most accessible Halo Multiplayer experience now and this is only the beginning. Along with updates to Halo Infinite, The Master Chief Collection has also received quite the update this month with the release of the final mod tools for all the games in the collection and integration with the Steam Workshop, making mods even more accessible as well. It’s certainly a great way to kick off the holiday season.

Forge has been out for just a little over a week and the amount of content the community has come out with in such a short time has been incredible! From remakes to mini-games to prefabs to new maps, forgers, seasoned and new are coming out with amazing stuff giving Halo Infinite a new life! We’ll undoubtedly be talking about more as content comes out and look to have several forgers on in the coming episodes. We’ll be off next week for Thanksgiving holiday here in the US, so we’ll talk to you in a couple of weeks.