Halo Infinite’s New Playlist Feels Key To The Game’s Future

If there’s one core issue that’s plagued Halo Infinite pretty much since launch, it’s been the severe lack of meaningful post-launch content. The team hasn’t delivered any new weapons at all so far, and additional maps for us to play around with have been pretty hard to come by as well. Late last year though, Forge’s arrival began to help alleviate that last issue somewhat, and the game’s new community-focused public playlist is exactly what Halo Infinite needs right now.

Halo Infinite ‘Community Collection’ is a brand-new featured playlist for multiplayer, and as the name suggests, it’s all based around community content. At present, four maps are featured across a variety of Halo Infinite’s 4v4 game modes.

While most of the playlist’s current maps do borrow elements from past Halo games (one is a straight remake of Damnation from Halo: Combat Evolved), it’s been so bloody nice to just play on four maps that feel fresh in Halo Infinite – all in one go, no less. Yes, Forge and its server browser have been available for a few months now, but proper curation from 343 to bring these creations to the standard multiplayer rotation is key for the future of Infinite.

We’ve been hopping on this playlist a lot since its arrival last week, and we’re very much looking forward to seeing where it goes next. 343 has said that the mode will be “updated with further community content in the future” – we just hope it sticks around as a permanent playlist for the foreseeable.

As for exactly where things go next? There are so many Forge creations the team could pull into standard multiplayer. Of course, we don’t expect 343 to start promoting some of the, ahem, wackier creations in this mode, but there’s still plenty to go at anyway. Halo Infinite Big Team Battle has been especially content bare since launch, so how about a dedicated Big Team Forge mode? That would be lovely.

Leaning into more remake-based content with Big Team is always going to be a solid option as well, isn’t it? Yes, we want to play on brand-new maps as much as anyone, but the Halo of old thrived on the interplay between Spartans and vehicles – that gameplay style deserves to get more attention in Infinite to be honest! Blood Gulch, Zanzibar, Valhalla, High Ground and more deserve to return in some fashion.

Anyway, enough about the future, more about the here and now. Halo Infinite’s new community playlist has been a massive breath of fresh air this past week, and we think the combination of Forge-made maps and developer-led curation could be key to keeping the game thriving in 2023 and beyond. Community creations have always been important to Halo, and with how Infinite’s ‘live service’ has gone so far, we reckon they might be essential this time around.