Six long years after Halo 5: Guardians, Halo Infinite is ready to pick up the mantle of Xbox’s flagship franchise. This time, the man in green gets an open-world playground of his own, Zeta Halo. And with a new playground comes new tools to even the odds against the Banished.
What isn’t new is equipment that can be carried and deployed to change the momentum of any game. Equipment was first introduced in Halo 3, and is now a vital part of Halo’s ecosystem.
Why is equipment a big deal? Equipment disrupts Halo’s golden triangle of damage dealing: melee, grenades, and guns. The golden triangle lies at the heart of every Halo game, though the term grew in popularity after being mentioned in a Halo 3 documentary. And while Halo’s approach to health and movement is unique too, the golden triangle is what’s responsible for the skill-based combat that Halo is most known for. Halo Infinite even mentions it by name across hints dropped during multiplayer matches.
Through the last 14 years, equipment meddled with Halo’s golden triangle in both good and bad ways, and nothing Halo devs have introduced since has made such a long-lasting impression. Before we take a look at how Halo Infinite implements it, let’s dive into the checkered evolution of equipment through Halo’s formative years to today, where it’s become a staple of gameplay in Halo Infinite.
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Although equipment didn’t enter the picture until Halo 3, Halo: Combat Evolved brought a lot to the first-person shooter buffet back in 2001. Bungie’s history with the Marathon franchise shaped the golden triangle and kicked off the studio’s obsession with mechanics that threw a wrench into that triangle over the years. Regenerating health, for example, drastically altered the mode of engagement by encouraging risky plays. Master Chief didn’t need to duck behind cover against plasma fire as he tore through Covenant ranks…unless you were playing on Legendary, of course.
Restricting players to carrying two weapons added a pinch of strategy to the mix, making power weapons like the Energy Sword and the Sniper Rifle even more meaningful. These weapons would temporarily sink their teeth into Halo’s golden triangle, forcing players to adapt to the change in rhythm. Bungie wasn’t afraid to experiment with its brainchild and this elevated firefights to the status of a dance to the death.
The second shuffle in Halo’s arsenal were powerups, temporary boosts on the field that could tilt the golden triangle in the wielder’s favor. Overshield beefed up your shields while Active Camo turned players near-invisible until they peppered a poor opponent with lead. Halo’s balance didn’t slip, however, as powerups could still be countered by skill or sheer determination.
Halo 2
Powerups would go on to become a mainstay in subsequent Halo titles, and the LAN party sleepovers were just getting started. But Halo 2 had other ideas when it came to polishing the golden triangle, and the big-budget sequel built on everything that made the original so compelling. Master Chief’s second adventure cranked up the heat with two big additions: Xbox Live multiplayer and dual-wielding.
Emptying a magazine into a Covenant Elite was one thing, but two magazines at once? Glorious. The uptick in versatility meant players could wield a plasma pistol and a Magnum at once, a combination lethal against both enemy shields and armor. This made for some spicy multiplayer encounters. Balance issues led to it becoming a short-lived addition to the franchise, though. Dual-wielding didn’t make it past Halo 3.
Halo 3
But the third iteration of Halo brought about the most radical disruption to the golden triangle yet: powerful single-use pieces of equipment that could be deployed at any time after they had been picked up. Both Covenant forces and Master Chief had access to tricks that gleefully complicated Halo’s refined melee-grenade-gun formula. Exhibit A: The protective bubble shield.
While the Deployable Cover and the Regenerator helped shore up defenses, other pieces of equipment let players go on the attack. The portable gravity lift and shield-depleting Power drain allowed Spartans to rewrite the rules of engagement. Battles could be won before the first shot, a change that sent the golden triangle spinning. Even vehicles like the Warthog weren’t safe from equipment like the Trip Mine.
But the additions divided fans and critics. Some believed Halo had completely lost sight of the golden triangle and was becoming the videogame equivalent of a buffet. Others argued the new equipment brought some welcome spectacle to the sport’s steadfast ruleset. Regardless of where you sat, Bungie knew it wasn’t perfect. The vision-blinding Flare, for example, was deemed unbalanced shortly after launch and met a quick end.
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