Halo Infinite may have been delayed until next year, but Halo fans are busy trying to recreate the world shown in its first gameplay trailer inside of the last Halo game.
Halo 5: Guardians is five years old at this point and hasn’t gotten a major update in quite some time. But its map making Forge mode is still popular with some creators, including those who’ve recently set their sights on helping others relive Halo Infinite’s messy gameplay reveal last month. We finally got to see what the game looks like in action at Microsoft’s July showcase, and it looked pretty good. When things slowed down or stopped altogether it looked decidedly less good.
But that hasn’t stopped players from meticulously recreating the demo’s plastic-looking trees and Mega Bloks-inspired hexagonal rock columns in Forge. One of the earliest was a 4v4 Slayer map made by a player called Blttserz, who said it was finished within 48 hours of the gameplay trailer being shown.
Another Forge creator called Unsorted Guy recently released a map encompassing much of the entire demo area, complete with mannequin-esque Grunts and Elites who don’t move but whom you can punch and blow up just like in the trailer. In a side-by-side comparison of the Forge map and actual Halo Infinite gameplay, the Forge map clearly lacks the same level of detail and depth of lighting, but not nearly as much as I was expecting.
Over the weekend, map maker Ducain23 showed off his current work-in-progress, which already looks like one of the more detailed attempts yet. “Making good progress and still have about 700 objects left,” he wrote in a tweet. While still incomplete, you can already see the mighty hex columns denoting the rebuilding of the Halo ring in all of their flat, brutalist glory. Ducain23 has also been streaming his efforts in the Forge live on Twitch.
When Halo Infinite finally does come out I still expect it to look much better than any Forge remake, or even the gameplay build that was shared in July. Hopefully its new and improved Forge mode will usher in a new era of Halo map making as well.