“Halo Infinite” is as close as possible to the original vision Joseph Staten saw when he first laid eyes on the first Halo game in 1998.
More than 20 years later, and after a 12-year hiatus from the Halo brand he helped create and launch, Staten is finally seeing a Halo game that resembles that original dream, thanks to the brand’s ongoing popularity, as well as advances in technology.
Staten joined Bungie, the creators of Halo, to work on the original title in 1998, when it was already deep into development. Eventually, he became a core pillar of the team, establishing the series mythos, themes, story lines and characters. His return to the brand came shortly after “Infinite’s” turbulent development began to draw public attention. A campaign reveal last year was widely criticized for underwhelming graphics, after which 343 Industries, the franchise’s current stewards, delayed “Infinite” to this December.
It was a risky decision for Microsoft, which owns 343. The Halo brand remains the closest thing it has to a Mario-like legacy brand, and without “Infinite” its new Xbox consoles launched last holiday season lacking a killer app.
Staten said he offered to help and was brought on to be Halo’s head of creative. In our conversation, he was complementary of the team’s original vision for the campaign.
“They described it to me at the time as a spiritual reboot, which still makes a lot of sense,” Staten said. “We’re not retelling the story of ‘Halo 1.’ What the team set out to do and I think really succeeded at was to capture the tone and some of those strong themes of the early Halo games, but also modernize as well with new systems. I thought that was a really effective strategy to appeal to core fans while also trying to attract new players at the same time.”
The team also made the decision — before Staten joined — not to make a direct narrative sequel to “Halo 5: Guardians.” That game ended with the former co-star of the series, the artificial intelligence Cortana, betraying the human race and forming her own army of sentient beings to assume the universe’s so-called “Mantle of Responsibility.” If that sounds confusing and unsatisfying, many players agreed with that thinking.
“There’s a connective tissue between the two games,” Staten said. “And it definitely enriches the experience if you play the previous Halo games and if you played ‘Halo 5,’ but if you’re brand new to the franchise, we wanted to make sure that we really sloped the floor for you, that we open the door, turn on the lights and say, ‘Hey, just jump in and enjoy.’ It feels a lot like the original Halo game: You don’t know a lot when you start, so you find yourself on a strange new world with a new AI companion and you’re figuring this all out together.”
Staten advised the team to double down on the game’s more intimate, emotional moments while scaling back some of the grander scale of the last two Halo games, whose scripts included events that happened hundreds of thousands of years ago, across galaxies far, far away. The Halo franchise lore reaches back to the beginning of time itself, with much of it detailed in various novels and extended, sometimes confusing, cutscenes from the last two games.
Staten acknowledged that even though the Halo series has sold tens of millions of copies over the years, there are still millions of players who aren’t familiar with the story.
“That core [of people who know our expanded universe] are foundational players in our community who have been with us for a long, long time,” Staten said. “But even members of that community had feedback where they said, ‘You know, it’s just too complicated. We just want a simple Master Chief story.’”
In a modern games industry that often flirts with darker themes and tones, especially in its shooting games, Staten said Halo has distinguished itself with being far more lighthearted in tone. The original Halo games were early master classes in tonal balance, switching gears from 1980s style sci-fi action hero tales to space opera to slapstick comedy.
“What I emphasize to the team is that themes are really powerful ideas, [and] not just in terms of telling a great story,” Staten said. “They allow us as a team to align on what we’re doing, whether you’re making a multiplayer map or designing a new character. … I’ve learned over the years that if you can agree on those fundamentals, if you can agree on goals and principles and strong themes, details like plotting take care of themselves. Halo has always been a universe where we can tell thousands of different stories. But before we figure out what the stories are, let’s make sure that we know what those core ideas are.”
Staten’s return to Halo after Bungie’s departure from Microsoft’s Xbox studios was not something he ever anticipated. He has been friends with the brand’s new stewards at 343 Industries, developer of “Infinite” and the last two games in the series. Sometimes he’d hop on a call or join them, including 343 Industries general manager Bonnie Ross, for coffee just to dish on ideas and thoughts on the evolution of the series.
“I’ve always made myself available to help, [it’s] just the kind of person I am,” Staten said. “It just feels like coming home. … It’s a lot harder to ship a Halo game when you’re 49 compared to 29, but I’m energized not only with what we’re shipping, but our plans moving forward. I think we’ve got a lot of really exciting, innovative stuff that we hope fans are going to enjoy.”
The gaming ecosystem has also changed in the two decades since the first game. Multiplayer games now require almost 24-hours-a-day engagement with their player bases on social media. Distribution of “Halo Infinite” now includes a free-to-play model, a retail model and a subscription model (with its inclusion on Xbox Game Pass). On top of that, the game needs to run well on four different Xbox platforms, as well as on PC.
“I was 29 when the first Halo game came out, and I’m much older now,” Staten said. “A good lesson, for me, is that the things that endure are strong themes and tone. I think the reason Halo endures in large part is because it’s epic sci-fi, but also very hopeful, heroic, bright [and] leavened with humor. And you know what? Humanity in real life has been kicked to the knees in the last two years. We’ve all been knocked down. It’s been a rough stretch for people on this planet. And here comes Halo, once again with this hero that embodies getting knocked down and standing back up.”

