Halo Infinite’s December Update is a Strong One

We’ve had a general idea about what’s on the horizon for Halo Infinite. The Winter Update launched last month and two free events are set to go live this month and next respectively. Nestled sometime before the end of the year was another drop pod update, which have traditionally acted as small quality-of-life updates between the larger patches. A post from last week by the Halo Support Twitter account revealed that it would be going live on December 6th, however, they decided to hide how substantial the update would be as a surprise for players.

Headlining the update is the early release of the Custom Game Browser. Even though the community has been happier since the Forge beta launched with the start of the Winter Update, the lack of a Custom Game Browser to sort through community creations has been sorely felt. 343 Industries evidently took notice of this and prioritized the release to come now instead of with Season 3 as originally planned.

Another welcome addition is the Halo 3 fan-favorite map The Pit. Remade in Forge and called Empyrean this time around, long-time fans will feel quite familiar knowing what’s around each corner. At the same time, new equipment and refreshed aesthetics are sure to provide new experiences. The map is available for both matchmaking and custom games.

The armor customization system has long been criticized, especially in comparison to previous titles and especially Halo: The Master Chief Collection. To provide players with more options, all of the armor cores that have so far been introduced are now free for all players.

Each of them (along with future cores) also now come with the ten basic Cadet coatings that were previously only available with the Mark VII and Mark V [B] armor cores. This is a great update for new players or anyone who missed out on these armor cores, most of which were tied to battle passes and Fracture events.

Rounding the update out are some highly requested improvements. Mouse & Keyboard users should have improved aiming, red reticle options, and options pertaining to a walk button. In-game player reporting and muting have been added to the scoreboard. Melee trades no longer favor an Energy Sword user either.

What is sure to excite many players is that desync is supposed to be reduced when it comes to vehicles, melee attacks, and blank shots. There may still be work needed to be done, but it is exciting for one of the biggest online issues to be addressed. If you’re looking for information directly from the source, a new Halo Waypoint blog post goes over everything. A new video that goes over the highlights can also be seen below.