The developers of Halo Infinite admitted recently that they may have oversold what the game’s bots are capable of. During an hour-long livestream video on YouTube, the developers of the game have admitted that the bots they’ve been selling practically since the game was announced may have been a little overhyped. That said, they’re trying to make sure the bots stay useful.
Community director Brian Jarrard, in a conversation with designer Sarah Stern, spoke about the bots near the beginning of the stream: “I’ll be the first to admit, we maybe, maybe kinda overhyped it a little bit… the Spartan bots, while not meant to be punishing as per your design goals, weren’t really the next level that you and the team had intended, and certainly not to the extent that we had overhyped this big experience.”
The point of the bots is to be something players can test themselves against. Supposedly the bots in the early flights of the game were very good against human players and would mimic several strategies used by human players, rather than just blindly rushing critical points. Depending on how well the human players played, the bots would get better and better. As a member of the development staff said at the time: “We wanted our bots to feel human enough that they were helping players develop the right skills to make them successful in matchmaking.”
And that was all over the place about a month ago: How good Halo Infinite’s bots were. So I can understand if, as the game’s launch date draws closer, the bots aren’t as spectacular as they seemed to be. Stern said that, for the next preview, “We’ve bumped the difficulty across the board, especially because we’re now introducing Recruit into the mix so there is another option for that earlier player who wants a lighter experience, so the bots should be a little bit more challenging this time.”
