Halo Infinite has been called a "spiritual reboot" by 343 Industries and it seems that may work its way into some of the tried and true aesthetic of the series. Fans have pointed out that a long-unchanged element of the HUD will be getting a subtle, yet relatively noteworthy change in Halo Infinite.
The new entry in Xbox's beloved sci-fi franchise is set to right some of the wrongs of the last entry. Halo 5 released in 2015 and really rubbed fans the wrong way with its story. 343 Industries has been taking its time to make sure Halo Infinite is done properly, even at the cost of missing out on being an Xbox Series X launch game. Halo Infinite will still continue Halo 5's story and treat Cortana as some sort of an antagonist, but it's unclear how much of the story will revolve around her.
343 has been criticized for its handling of Halo after taking over for Bungie. The developer added things like sprinting as a permanent gameplay feature, something Halo veterans are divided on, and now they'll be changing the ammo counter in the HUD. In previous games, the ammo counter would have a number that represented the total bullets that the player had and then the actual magazine would be represented by filled-in bullets. That's going away with Halo Infinite and will be a more traditional FPS bullet counter (via Reddit), which may defeat the purpose of having one that's also implemented on a small screen on some weapons like the AR.
Still, Halo Infinite looks incredibly promising. It doesn't seem like 343 is making changes to be different, there's a lot of care being put into this game to ensure it delivers something worthwhile for the fans. 343 has been on thin ice since Halo 5 and another misfire like that could be fatal for the studio. Whether or not this change is necessary may depend on who you ask, but hopefully, there's an option to change it in the settings for the die-hard fans.
Halo Infinite is shaking up a lot of different things for the series. Instead of being a standard linear shooter, Halo Infinite will expand into a more open-world approach, but it's not being labeled as an open-world game by 343 Industries. This is more in an effort to drawback to some levels from the first game while also building upon that concept with new technology, allowing for things like day/night cycles and more. Even with its changes, it seems Halo Infinite is a game built with fans in mind.
Halo Infinite will release later this year on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
Source: Reddit