August Update Preview

Since its release, Season 4: Infection has been winning over hearts and Iratus has been taking over minds. Although the reception of Season 4 has been great, there’s still plenty to do and we haven’t slowed down or lost sight of that fact. To help illustrate that point, let’s take a look at some of the additions, improvements, and bug fixes landing next Wednesday, August 9, with the upcoming August Update!

Our newest map, Dredge, is entering Halo Infinite’s lineup next week! With inspiration directly from Halo: Reach’s popular map Countdown, this forged homage is sure to make a lasting impression. When diving into the map for the first time, players can expect a new take on the scenery and refreshed gameplay flow.

Starting next Wednesday, you’ll be able to play Dredge all day long in the Dredge 24/7 playlist!

In addition to a new multiplayer map, the Halo Infinite team has really been focusing their efforts on top community requests. Let’s take a look at the feedback topics they went after!

After cracking open the code for Pelican vehicle deliveries in Big Team Battle, we found a few different systems that used specific markers that worked together to deliver vehicles. While predictable, the outcome was not quite the same as the consistent, symmetrical vehicle drops that Halo fans typically prefer.

To bring the Pelican deliveries closer in line with those expectations, we’ve improved the system to deliver the same vehicles on both sides of the map in the same wave.

Please note: due to different Pelican flight paths, there may be a difference in the exact timings of delivery. 

In another effort to improve the BTB experience, the team also tackled a common piece of community feedback around intro cameras. Now, Big Team Battle matches will prioritize placing the members of your Fireteam in your in-game squad of four players. That means during the intro camera sequences at the start of each game, the line up shot with four Spartans will also prioritize showing members of your Fireteam.

There are not many feelings that can match the rewarding sensation of taking down an entire enemy team and hearing Jeff Steitzer say, “Extermination.” 

With the introduction of the Elimination and Attrition game modes in Halo Infinite, there was a desire to help make that medal moment even more special by attributing it to Overkills that helped end a round. However, many of you expressed that this made it feel too tucked away and asked for it to return to all game modes—and that request was heard loud and clear.

We’re happy to say that with the launch of the August Update, the Extermination medal will be available in all multiplayer modes. We look forward to you all sharing clips of your favorite clean sweeps online!

While this topic was a bit more niche, we saw the posts and comments asking for improvements in this area and the team was happy to jump on it. 

Our reasoning for going with static death cams was to help ensure a fair environment in which a team only gathered information that was earned. However, we heard the feedback around the static death cams and we went after it for this update.

Starting next week, after you’ve fallen in combat, you’ll be able to rotate your death cam to look around while spectating teammates—much like in previous titles. We expect this extra bit of freedom will encourage even better teamwork and improve communication while players wait to respawn. 

Additionally, to help make sure you can spectate your teammate’s even faster, we’ve increased the speed at which you can cycle through players on your death cam. Now, with this additional layer of player agency, you should always be able to help a teammate in need. 

Season 4 brought the first appearance of a placeable and scalable water object in Forge—the static water plane. Being a static object, it didn’t react to gameplay interactions such as footsteps, bullets, or explosions and was more applicable for map aesthetics. It was a big step forward for Forge, but we knew that having a reactive water plane would be the next big leap.

Next week, you’ll be able to take that leap with the addition of a scalable water plane in Forge. This new water object will react to players, vehicles, and projectiles just like it would on any of our dev maps!

In addition to the introduction of the reactive water plane, Forge will also get some extra love and polish in this update. A quality-of-life (QoL) update for our Forge menu folders means that creators will be able to expand and collapse all the folders in each menu with a single action. Beyond that, the team went after numerous community-reported issues for the August Update.

Much like all our updates, the focus of the August Update was to continue addressing top community requests across the board. In addition to the few topics we’ve covered above, we’ll have even more fixes for top community reported issues such as Personal AI voice resetting, bringing slide back to parity with its Season 3 behavior, multiple Observer and Theater bugs, and stability improvements for all platforms.

While we know there will always be plenty more to go after, we’re excited to release this one and share these improvements with you. Thank you for your continued support and constructive feedback as we continue to update Halo Infinite!