Halo Infinite's campaign won't feature co-op until May 2022 at the earliest

Master Chief — (Image credit: Microsoft)

The previews are in: Halo Infinite's campaign is very good, with Wes reckoning it might just pull off an open world rebirth for the venerable series. But while we knew co-op wouldn't arrive until after launch, 343 has reaffirmed that it could be half a year before we crash onto Zeta Halo with a buddy.

Intially, 343 told us that co-op wouldn't arrive until Season 2. That was when seasons were planned to be 3 months long, of course, but with Season 1 now set to last 6 months, the developer told Eurogamer it's still holding out for the new season to bring in co-op play.

"At the time that we talked about campaign co-op and Forge I said our goal is to ship campaign co-op in Season 2 and our goal is to ship Forge with Season 3," series veteran and 343 Head of Creative Joseph Staten told the outlet.

"Yes, we are extending Season 1. So our goal still remains what I said before, which is to ship campaign co-op with Season 2 and Forge with Season 3. But those remain goals. Those remain targets. And we can't commit to any hard dates right now, because as we're seeing with this multiplayer beta, other things might move up in the priority stack for us."

That statement also suggests that Forge mode, Halo's versatile built-in map editing suite, likely won't arrive until late summer. But as Staten says, these are early estimates, and could easily be pushed back if fixing other parts of the game (say, a frustratingly stingy battle pass) takes priority.

"If it turns out that our progression system just isn't working the way that we intended, if we need to move some of these bigger rocks sooner, then we as a team will make those decisions and will clearly communicate to our fans why we're why we're doing certain things."

343 has already begun making tweaks to that pass, with plans to add a more standalone progression system later down the line. Hopefully, this doesn't put too much of a dent into the already-overlong wait for some classic Halo co-op antics.

20 years ago, Nat played Jet Set Radio Future for the first time, and she's not stopped thinking about games since. Joining PC Gamer in 2020, she comes from three years of freelance reporting at Rock Paper Shotgun, Waypoint, VG247 and more. Embedded in the European indie scene and a part-time game developer herself, Nat is always looking for a new curiosity to scream about—whether it's the next best indie darling, or simply someone modding a Scotmid into Black Mesa. She also unofficially appears in Apex Legends under the pseudonym Horizon.