Small Details You Missed In Halo Infinite
After six long years, players around the world finally got their hands on 343 Industries' "Halo Infinite." Set three years after the events of the first-person-shooter franchise's previous entry, "Halo 5: Guardians," the game follows Master Chief and a new artificial intelligence referred to only as "the Weapon" as they explore Zeta Halo and do their best to stop the Banished from destroying humanity.
Unlike the series' previous games, however, the majority of "Halo Infinite" is set in and around a large, detailed, and populated open world filled with high value targets to eliminate, enemy strongholds to destroy, and an entire campaign's worth of missions to complete. It's easily the largest "Halo" game so far, featuring a campaign that can take anywhere from five to thirty hours to complete, all of which depends on how players approach the game and how many of its optional objectives they choose to complete.
With such a vast amount of content, however, comes an equally massive number of details that many players might miss their first time through. Whether it's something common like unexplained gameplay mechanics or some strange, esoteric easter egg that will leave newbies scratching their heads, these are just some of the small things you may have missed in "Halo Infinite."
Beware of spoilers ahead for "Halo Infinite."
Halo Infinite cosmetics feature some deep cuts
As one might expect, the multiplayer cosmetic system in "Halo Infinite" features a number of callbacks and references to the series' expanded lore, but even long-time fans of the franchise might end up missing some of its more obscure references.
For example, one chest piece in the $15 "Daisy Delights" bundle is just a small teddy bear pinned to the armor. Though this might seem like a relatively generic cosmetic, the set is a reference to Daisy-023, a Spartan-II who only appeared on screen once over a decade ago, in a single anime short from "Halo Legends" titled "Homecoming." The bear was the only piece of her childhood that Daisy kept when she was conscripted into the Spartan program as a small child. Daisy-023 would later make sporadic appearances in print, leaving an impression on fans.
Additionally, Spartan Commander Agryna sports a stylized bee on her armor that appears to be a reference to the "i love bees" alternate reality game that promoted "Halo 2." It's one of the game's default cosmetics, and the armor emblem and nameplate are both labeled, "I Love Bees." Meanwhile, the backdrop featuring the image is called "Margaret's Honey," referencing the website for the classic ARG.
Some weapon charms available to purchase in the in-game shop are also fun callbacks. For example, the "Space Pickle" charm is the Covenant antimatter bomb from one of the most famous cutscenes in "Halo 2."
Nearly every loading screen is an easter egg
At launch, every loading screen in Halo Infinite features the same image of Zeta Halo's broken surface, but the text always changes as it rotates among a selection of helpful tips and tricks. One detail that fans may have missed however, is that the title for each of these tips is almost always a direct reference to a beloved franchise.
For example, one tip comments on the reduced movement speed that players experience while holding a detached turret; its title is "Overencumbered And Cannot Run," a common in-game message that players receive in Bethesda's "Elder Scrolls" and "Fallout" titles when they try to carry too many things at once. "Glorious Purpose" references Loki and the Marvel Cinematic Universe while telling players about upgrading their abilities during the campaign, and "You Are A Bold One" references General Grievous in "Star Wars – Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith."
As should be expected, many of the titles also reference previous Halo games. "Forward Unto Dawn," which advises players to honk a vehicle's horn to invite teammates aboard, is the name of an important ship from "Halo 3" and "4," as well as a web series. "I Don't Keep It Loaded, Son" advises players to scavenge ammo on the battlefield; it's also the line of dialogue players hear in "Halo: Combat Evolved" when they're given their first gun. Likewise, hints like "The Terms Of Your Execution Are Up to Me" and "No Punishment Is Too Great" are both lines from "Halo 2" cutscenes.
The motion tracker hides a few secrets
Though the majority of the game's most important mechanics are clearly explained in detail, some of its finer details can easily escape a player's notice if they aren't paying attention. The best example of this is this entry's version of the classic "motion tracker."
Traditionally located in the bottom left corner of the screen, the exact details and functionality of the motion tracker vary from game to game, but the general function remains the same. For set radius around the player's perimeter, any movement is shown as a small dot. Typically, enemies appear as red dots and yellow or blue dots indicate allies, and the device can be used to help locate enemies while also ensuring nobody can sneak up behind you.
The motion tracker in "Halo Infinite," however, has two distinct features that many players may have missed. First, if the edges of a dot on the radar appear to be glowing, that person is on the same vertical plane as you are. If it's not glowing, they are either above or below you. Second, this motion tracker features an inner circle with an arrow that always points north, meaning players always have a compass. Though not especially useful in multiplayer, the feature is a great tool to help navigate the campaign's large open world.
You can visit Sesame Street (sort of)
One of the many new additions "Halo Infinite" brings to the franchise is the ability to "mark" areas of interest for the rest of your team during multiplayer gameplay, which allows you to highlight weapons, objectives, locations, and enemies. When players mark a location, the game will display the name for that location's callout. This allows players to verbally communicate the information to their teammates if needed, but it can also be used to hide or reveal special Easter eggs.
One such reference is found on the map "Streets." Just outside an entrance to the subway station is an alley with two different trash cans. If the trash can on the right is marked, the name it displays is "Oscar's House." This is, of course, a fun reference to Oscar the Grouch, the furry green Muppet from the long-running show "Sesame Street," who famously lives inside of a garbage can.
Halo Infinite is hiding a sandwich conspiracy
"Halo Infinite" is hiding a vast, sandwich conspiracy.
In the game's multiplayer tutorial, a marine can be found working at a desk with a sandwich. In the multiplayer map "Aquarius," there is a small vent in the bottom, middle portion of the map that players can look through to see a surprisingly detailed room filled with related equipment and... another sandwich. On the Big Team Battle map, "Highpower," there is a small room in "Waterfall Base" that has only three things: a sleeping bag, a weapon pad, and a sandwich.
This strange coincidence led the YouTube channel Rocket Sloth to organize a group of players through their Discord to search every multiplayer level from top to bottom for more sandwiches. They found nothing, making it seem that the sandwiches were just one more seldom-used piece of set-dressing for the design team — until another YouTuber, xGarbett, discovered something big.
Hidden within a relatively innocuous cave on Zeta Halo is a small hole that goes almost straight up. It's entrance is barely visible and appears too small to travel through, but when grappled at just the right point, players will fly up and find themselves face-to-face with a gigantic sandwich atop a stone alter. It's surrounded by several Grunts, frozen alive in acts of worship as 8-bit versions of "Halo" soundtracks play in the background. Is the sandwich the object of praise or an offering to some eldritch being? Only time may tell.
The UNSC Infinity discovered karma the hard way
Introduced in "Halo 4," the UNSC Infinity was a brand new ship, built by humanity using Forerunner technology and other advances they reverse-engineered from Covenant equipment. The UNSC Infinity was the largest and most advanced space ship humankind had ever produced. It was the first human ship with energy shields, was large enough to store entire frigates inside of itself, and had engines that could travel faster and more precisely than ever before.
It was so strong, in fact, that in the opening cutscene for the first season of the "Spartan Ops" game mode in "Halo 4," the Infinity literally flew through a Covenant cruiser as if it was nothing, completely destroying the enemy ship while leaving itself totally unharmed. It's a great scene that highlights how far humanity had come since the original "Halo" trilogy — but the first scene of "Halo Infinite" would show how much further they still have to go.
After panning away from a stellar view of Zeta Halo, a Banished starship smashes through the upper portion of the Infinity in a moment that feels purposely reminiscent of the Infinity's attack in "Halo 4." It's literally the second shot of the game, and it sets the tone in just the same way. Unfortunately for the heroes, instead of highlighting humanity's development, it prepares the player for the broken UNSC forces they'll find on the ring's surface.
The Pilot and Master Chief's first meeting is filled with callbacks
During the lengthy opening cutscene to "Halo Infinite," the Pilot discovers Master Chief floating in space, brings him inside his dropship, and begins to reboot his armor. These are two of the game's three primary protagonists, and their first meeting is filled to the brim with callbacks to previous Halo games.
Starting off strong, one of the Pilot's first comments is that "the power cells are fried." This is somewhat similar to the opening of "Halo 2," when Cairo Station's armory sergeant tells Master Chief the bad news about his old Mk. V armor: "Optics? Totally fried. And let's not even talk about the power supply." Master Chief has been barely scraping by with his armor for years, and fans will likely appreciate that some thing never change.
Similarly, Chief coming out of his suit's "survival mode" harkens back to the beginning of "Combat Evolved" (CE) when he's reawakened from cryosleep, and Chief has gone through the visual test the Pilot issues afterwards in "CE," "Halo 2," "Halo 3," and "Halo 4."
If that wasn't enough, just like "Combat Evolved," Chief has to find ammo as he goes for his first weapon, a pistol, and the way he uses his one shot to blow up an explosive after he throws it is almost visually identical to a shot from one of the original "Halo 4" teasers.
There's a reason the Pilot's pistol only had one bullet
"Halo Infinite" spends its entire campaign hammering home one theme: even if all seems lost, reject despair and choose hope. This theme isn't subtle, and the game's main villain, the Banished War Chief Escharum, even announces his goal to destroy Master Chief's sense of hope quite loudly at multiple points during the story. Still, that's not to say that there aren't smaller, more subtle instances of the theme throughout, and one of them is quite heartbreaking.
After being revived by the Pilot aboard his Pelican, a Banished ship arrives to salvage the wreckage surrounding it, and Master Chief grabs the Pilot's only weapon and leaps into space to confront it. There's just one problem: the pistol is only loaded with one bullet. Though it's a seemingly innocuous detail at first glance, the subtext and implication surrounding it is tragic. This detail has stuck out to fans as an example of the strong visual storytelling in the game.
By the time he discovered Chief, the Pilot had already been floating in space, alone, for six months. He was running low on supplies and on hope, and it's hard not to imagine that he was saving that bullet for one reason: so he could end his own life.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
There's a secret way to capture Outpost Tremonius
After fighting through the Banished ship, landing on Zeta Halo, retrieving the Weapon, and battling to the ring's surface, players will find themselves face-to-face with their first Banished base: Outpost Tremonius. The base is named after the game's first boss, and it was built in the shadow of a crashed human frigate named the UNSC Mortal Reverie.
The outpost is fairly large and filled with enemies that the player must completely eliminate in order to proceed. On harder difficulties, it can feel like a pretty tall order, but there's actually a secret way to clear the entire base without firing a single bullet. Hidden behind, above, and beside the base are three secret button pads that can be activated by the player, the last of which is right next to two large cannons on the Mortal Reverie's hull.
Activating all three will trigger an "air strike" that bombards the base and kills everybody inside. Though there's no accompanying animation, it seems likely that these shells are meant to be coming from the two cannons on the ship, especially since players discovered that a hidden (and likely bugged) weapon can be picked up from the tip of the right-side cannon's right-most barrel under the right conditions.
Your controller's vibration settings can make one moment even more heartbreaking
As "Halo Infinite" players make their way through the game's story missions, they'll discover a friendly UNSC signal that leads them to The Tower, a Banished Base designed to hold prisoners while they are tortured and interrogated for their own amusement, information, or both. After infiltrating the Tower itself, Master Chief and the Weapon discover pieces of a suit of Mk. VII Mjolnir Power Armor that had been forcefully removed from the Spartan who wore it.
Making their way to the top of the tower, they discover the armor's owner, Spartan Griffin, strapped into a torture chamber. The duo kill the facility's warden and free the Spartan, but they're too late, and Griffin dies in Chief's arms after relaying vital information and imploring Chief to stop the Banished once and for all.
It's a sad scene, but one detail makes it even more tragic. If the player is using a controller with vibrational settings, the controller will vibrate in sync with Spartan Griffin's heartbeat. It starts out quite fast and erratic, but gradually settles down into a more gentle rhythm before slowing down further and further until it stops completely. The soldier doesn't just die in Master Chief's arms; he dies in the player's hands, too.
The "Craig" meme lives on in more ways than one
Though the original campaign reveal for "Halo Infinite" disappointed many fans, one screenshot of a Brute that Master Chief had bashed in the face became an enduring meme: Craig the Brute. After the popularity of this "character" skyrocketed, 343 Industries even mentioned it by name in its October 2021 Inside Infinite blog, promising fans that the brute was in safe hands and would live on in the game through various Easter eggs.
Cut to launch day on December 8 later that year, and fans were quick to begin their hunt for the promised tributes to the infamous character. The most famous of these is a shrine to Craig the rock star that can be found on top of The Tower. It features a stage, several instruments, a large poster with Craig's tour dates, and even his own vinyl album complete with a detailed track listing. This shrine will likely be found by many fans when they climb the Tower to acquire a Skull that's revealed on the tac-map after finishing the location's story mission.
A more subtle and lesser-known tribute to Craig was discovered by a Reddit user at FOB Charlie: "Craig Rock." In the hills directly behind the base, there's a large boulder shaped in the image of the famous Craig screenshot. It's only clearly visible from the location's main platform, as other viewing angles will distort the image.
Many of the main characters have hidden plush dolls
Quite possibly the cutest hidden things in "Halo Infinite" are the plush toys scattered throughout the map. These plushies are all snuggly miniature versions of established characters, and they can be found on random hillsides, underneath benches at marked locations, and in various other spots throughout the map. Players can't seem to agree on how many of these little guys are sprinkled about the game.
Reddit users have reported discovering plushies of Master Chief, the Weapon, the Pilot, the Arbiter, the Harbinger, grunts, and several others. Some of the dolls have more generic designs and are therefore harder to identify with any degree of confidence, but they're out there.
As noted by IGN, this isn't the first time that 343 Industries has used cute little plush dolls as hidden items in a "Halo" game. When they released "Halo: The Master Chief Collection" in 2014, the devs hid toys of Master Chief, the Prophet of Regret, the Arbiter, Tartarus, Cortana, the Librarian, and the Didact throughout the "Halo 2" campaign.
Master Chief's pass codes honor one of his first tragedies.
Towards the end of the campaign, Master Chief's distrust of his AI companion, "the Weapon," comes to a head when it looks like the artificial intelligence has been compromised by the Harbinger. Desperate to avoid a repeat of when Cortana went rogue and committed genocide, Chief gives the three-stage passcode needed to trigger the Weapon's deletion protocols.
It's a heavy moment that shows Master Chief's darker side, but just in case this tragic event and gut-wrenching betrayal wasn't emotional enough, 343 Industries made Chief's passcodes references to events that are even more painful for longtime "Halo" fans. The first of these is "Red Flag," which is a reference to the final operation that the Spartan-II's would begin before the Covenant attack on Reach interrupted it, scattered their forces, and killed many of them.
The second two passcodes, "034" and "Samuel," are a collective reference to one of Master Chief's original Spartan teammates, Samuel-034. Kidnapped at the age of six and forcibly conscripted into the Spartan-II program just like Master Chief, Samuel was one of the Chief's best friends, and the pair grew up training together in the same fireteam. Unfortunately, at the age of fourteen, Samuel was killed during the Spartans' first encounter with the Covenant, making Samuel the first Spartan to ever die in combat. And sadly, he wouldn't be the last.