Season 4 ofHalo Infinitewill be upon us in just a few days, this coming Tuesday, June 20, and one of its top developers is urging players to get aggressive with the new equipment if they want to win. Brian Berryhill, Gameplay Lead for343 Industriesnewest season of Infinite, titled Infection, sat down for a video on the official Halo YouTube channel, in which he sheds more information on two new pieces of equipment coming to the game in Season 4: the Quantum Translocator and the Threat Seeker.
“I would definitely say play offensively with the equipment,” he told the hosts. “Everybody’s first initial gut is to play defensively, to push in and then pull out, but … if you’re using it to peek multiple sightlines, you can put a lot of pressure on situations that are 1v2 or even 1v3. Like even if you don’t kill anybody, you’re just creating a huge nuisance and a lot of pressure.”
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Similar in function to the Overshield or Active Camo — and replacing it on some of Infinite’s older maps — the Quantum Translocator will allow you to teleport back and forth between two points that you set up during a match. Using it the first time will create an exit point, and upon second use, you’ll jump straight back to that point as well as setting up the other jump point you’ll be able to teleport back to from the first point. Berryhill noted there is a cooldown associated with the item, so you won’t just be able to jump in and out of situations without restriction, but he asserted, “You’ll be able to use this equipment to ping pong a bunch of times,” allowing players to make quick escapes and set up some nasty kill angles.
The other new piece of equipment that Berryhill discussed was the Threat Seeker, which he described as “a sensing piece of equipment that’s tuned more for the competitive side of things.” Functionally, the Threat Seeker is thrown similarly to a grenade, but upon bouncing off a surface, its detonation reveals all hostiles in line of sight, showing them in a colored silhouette, even through walls, for about five or six seconds.
“What we really like about this is it puts more of a skill check up front, but if you succeed, you get a longer payoff, and there’s a lot of information you can glean about where someone’s going to recover or where they’re trying to push as a team, and we think it’s gonna kinda just help smooth out this sensing story working class we’re trying to get in a competitive environment,” he explained.
Early leaksof the Threat Seeker had led some members of the community to believe that it was a wall hack that would give some players an unfair advantage, as they would be able to see where their opponents were going at all times. Berryhill wanted to assuage those concerns, noting that the effect will not be permanent, and the player throwing the Threat Seeker will have to develop the skills to use it properly, saying “Free information is very bad in a competitive environment, so we wanted to put more of a skill check.”
If you’re already a Halo player, you’re likely already well acquainted with the Threat Sensor, which has a lot of similarities to the Threat Seeker. However, Berryhill wanted to point out that the threat sensor is optimized for Big Team Battles (BTB), whereas the Threat Seeker will provide a similar experience more attuned to Arena play. “It’s more about locking down an area and detecting all information in this area for, like, a long duration of time, where the threat seeker is more of a one-and-done, and then you have to repass that skill test,” he noted.
In addition to the new piece of equipment, the Threat Sensor will be getting an upgrade as well, as both its area of coverage and the rate at which it pings will be increased.
Halo Infinite Season 4: Infection kicks off on Tuesday, June 20.
