Halo Infinite levels won't be replayable at launch, but that will change
343 Industries say they're working on it
Halo Infinite comes out today! That's fun. What's slightly less fun, however, is that you won't be able to replay story missions. Microsoft have said that, while you can keep exploring the game's open world after you finish it, main campaign missions won't be available to repeat. Fortunately, this shouldn't be the case forever, because 343 Industries say that replayability is "being worked on", though they don't have a date for it just yet. (Mild spoilers for Infinite's campaign below).
"The postgame does give you the option to keep exploring the wider environment, but for missions like the first two, where you’re not on the ring yet, you can’t replay from the same save file," a Microsoft representative told Polygon. "You’d be able to get any remaining FOBs, targets, [and] audio logs, but the main story missions would not repeat."
So, if you want to dive back into the campaign with new difficulty settings or modifiers, you'll need to start a fresh save. From the sounds of things, at least completionists aren't locked out of grabbing all the collectibles, though it's still a shame to not be able to retry stuff without starting from scratch. Replayability is an especially odd omission considering previous Halo games made it easy to jump back into levels you'd already played.
It might not be that way forever, though. 343 Industries associate creative director Paul Crocker told The Verge: "We haven’t announced a date but [replaying missions] is being worked on."
"We want to have replay that works well, and when you have a more open game, it gets a lot trickier," he added. "So we made a decision to improve the quality of the single-player campaign to ensure that, as a foundation, that it’s as strong as it possibly could be so that we could then add the other features back in."
To be fair to them, the campaign does sound pretty good. In Brendy's Halo Infinite review, he says the storyline is a little rickety, but is ultimately saved by some good old nostalgic Halo fights. He reckons that, while the linear story missions are decent, the open world is where the game shines:
"An open world Halo is something I didn't even realise I wanted. I'm glad I got it. It has taken the series a while to look outside its corridor shooting monoculture for inspiration. But now that developers 343 Industries have broadened that corridor to the width of plains and stretched it to the height of mountains, it'll be hard to go back. You can't drive a jeep full of snipers down a corridor."
Sadly, replaying missions isn't all that won't be available when the game launches today. Players will have to wait until Halo Infinite Season 2 to be able to play the campaign co-op, and until Season 3 for the Forge level editor.