The long-awaited Campaign Network Co-op feature is coming to Halo Infinite later this month in preview form.
The announcement was made over on the Halo Waypoint blog, in which (Principal Software Engineer Lead) Isaac Bender and (Lead World Designer) John Mulkey at 343 Industries discussed some of the challenges in bringing Campaign Network Co-op to Halo Infinite, with Mulkey having this to say:
One of the greatest creative challenges has been in how we support this new, more open experience and the many new questions that raised. How do we set up a shared world state? How do we keep the Fireteam together? How do we determine intent and mission focus? How do we prevent sequence breaking the narrative?
Apparently the Halo Infinite Campaign Network Co-op will support any combination of PCs and Xboxes up to 4 players. It will also be playable via Xbox Cloud Gaming, with all co-op games hosted on dedicated servers.
Halo is always more fun with friends – jump into our latest preview blog to learn more about Halo Infinite's campaign network co-op and mission replay features ahead of next month's Insider flight.
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What’s even more exciting is the fact that everyone’s progress counts in co-op, and players are allowed to choose which save slot they want their co-op progress to count towards. Gone are the days of isolated co-op gaming. 343 is calling this feature “No Spartan Left Behind.” According to Mulkey:
When players join the Fireteam and choose their save slots to play on, the game aggregates the states of all missions across those saves and sets up a world state in which any missions completed by all Fireteam members are marked as complete while any missions not completed by all are marked as incomplete.
Under this system any unlocks found in co-op will carry over to single player. Isaac describes it as “creating a version of the world that’s like the “lowest common denominator” of everyone’s Campaign progress.” He adds that this system prevents players from completing missions out of order.
Campaign co-op has long been a fan favorite, and has provided many a gamer with some of their fondest gaming memories. It’s great to see Campaign Network Co-op finally coming to Halo Infinite. No doubt many Halo fans will be anxious to try it out when the insider preview (tentatively) arrives starting July 11.
