Halo Infinite is getting rid of its controversial armor core system

By Brendan Lowry
published

Players can expect more customization freedom partway through Season 2.

Halo Infinite Armor Core
Halo Infinite Armor Core (Image credit: Windows Central)

What you need to know

  • In a recent livestream, 343 Industries' Head of Creative Jerry Hook confirmed that the developers are looking to move away from Halo Infinite's armor core customization system.
  • Partway through Season 2, the developers have plans to make all helmets, visor colors, and armor coatings usable on all of the game's armor cores. From there, work will start on making all of the game's other armor pieces compatible with all cores.
  • Due to their unique and exaggerated design, the developers aren't planning to make these changes for Fracture armor cores like Yoroi for now.

In an official Halo Infinite Season 2 preview livestream, 343 Industries' Head of Design Jerry Hook has confirmed that the developers are looking at getting rid of Halo Infinite's controversial armor core customization system. "We realy lost the strength that Halo: Reach and Halo 3 brought to the franchise of allowing players to mix and match everything," Hook said of Halo Infinite's customization. "So ... we are looking at moving away completely from the core system."

Halo Infinite's armor cores act as base templates that players can equip armor coatings (colors and textures) and armor pieces on. 343 Industries' original goal with armor cores was to give players an extra level of customization separate from individual armor pieces. However, the armor core system has proven to be largely unpopular due to the fact that currently, most armor pieces, visor colors, and armor coatings can only be equipped on one specific core. This restriction significantly limits how much players can mix and match the customization items they've unlocked, and it's the primary reason many players argue that Halo Infinite's customization options are unacceptably shallow.

Source: Xbox Game Studios (Image credit: Source: Xbox Game Studios)

Moving forward, the developers are addressing these concerns by working to make customization items usable across all of Halo Infinite's armor cores. According to Hook, fans should be able to start using all of their helmets, visor colors, and armor coatings on all non-Fracture armor cores at some point during Halo Infinite Season 2. From there, the developers will then work on making all other types of armor pieces, such as shoulders and chestplates, usable on all armor cores. Notably, due to how uniquely shaped armor cores and armor pieces from Fracture events are, the developers aren't planning on implementing these changes for Fracture armor for now.

Overall, it's great to see that the developers are addressing the criticisms of the armor core system by working to get rid of its restrictions. It sounds like armor cores as a whole may be removed from the game eventually; if this happens, it will no doubt be interesting to see how the developers plan to rework Halo Infinite's customization systems moving forward.

Halo Infinite's multiplayer is free to play and is available on Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One consoles, and Windows PCs. It's a ton of fun despite some of its serious issues, and paired with the Halo Infinite campaign, it's one of the best Xbox games available right now.

Halo InfiniteThe legend returns

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Halo Infinite


Halo Infinite's campaign promises fans the most expansive singleplayer Halo experience to date, featuring a dynamic open world brimming with stories to uncover and hours of shooter action. It's a modern masterpiece that's familiar, yet fresh, in all the right ways.

Brendan Lowry
Brendan Lowry

Brendan Lowry is a Windows Central writer and Oakland University graduate with a burning passion for video games, of which he's been an avid fan since childhood. You'll find him doing reviews, editorials, and general coverage on everything Xbox and PC. Follow him on Twitter.

8 Comments
  • Common sense prevails!
  • It's more like... Bad mp lead gone. The lead who "quit" a few months back was more convinced to do so and get severance or get the boot and walk out without a check.. He had all the resources and talent needed and completely mismanaged both aspects which got us where we are. Spencer an co have had a hands off approach to development which isn't dissimilar to how they did it with the original Xbox and the first couple years of the 360. The issue is some teams need a higher level of supervision than others. Bungie was one such team. Undead Labs is another example. They said so themselves lol. So I think we will see some changes at Microsoft in terms of how teams are managed so that this kind of thing doesn't happen again. You would think letting developers do their thing would be the way to go but it's just not always the case. In fact it's probably more like 50/50. Microsoft wants a nice steady cadence of content for Halo just like they want very similar for gamepass. They have the talent and resources and I think halo infinite taught them quite a bit. Sure COVID didn't help and working from home significantly slows game development because it's harder to quickly get opinions on ideas or grab some help to iterate on an idea but it wasn't the only issue... Thankfully it seems that they have worked out everything behind the scenes and they have artists going full tilt, programmers working on some much wanted features and map/mode designers doing the same. Yeah it stinks having to wait, especially since the game is so much fun to play but I think it will be worth it sooner rather than later. Plus I imagine the 1 year anniversary will be pretty big when you consider there won't be a new COD or Battlefield to contend with. Hopefully Microsoft keeps cod on an every other year release schedule because that series needs to change. It's basically the same game as the 360 launch title just prettier and with massive amounts of MTX and by micro I actually mean way too expensive and also kind of unfair since a large number of those packages come with weapons that give you an advantage over others. That's why I was so happy when infinite launched... It was a return to form and there was no pay to win aspects in the battlepass or other MTX. Now they just need to get everything rolling smoothly (and I think they have) but we won't see the results of these changes for a few months. Of course they could always shock us and start delivering things like forge and maps sooner than expected. Who knows?
  • Halo Infinite has been an absolutely ridiculous cash sink of a game that has literally nothing to show for it. It is the most expensive game ever made at half a BILLION dollars, that is insane and it has absolutely nothing to show for such a ridiculous cost. Nothing about it is cutting edge or new. For every great idea it has a mediocre one. The grapple shot is fantastic, but why then spoonfeed abilities at random intervals so that once you get new abilities you never use them because you've already learned to adapt with what you have? The open world is just to pad the campaign which, I might add, is completely irrelevant. It basically treats everything that happened before it as redundant. Hell we completely miss it on a massive UNSC vs AI war, literally the thing we were all waiting for to conclude the Cortana trilogy. Even the opening cutscene is irrelevant to the rest of the story. Man, the more I think about Infinite the more annoyed I get. But as a game on its own merits you can't actually fault it which is why it reviewed highly there isn't anything inherently wrong with it. But when you consider it as a part of the Halo franchise it's an absolute mess.
  • I love the campaign personally. The majority of people hated what Halo 5 did with the narrative, myself very much included. I'm glad Infinite skipped over any kind of AI vs Human war
  • I can't say I enjoyed 5 all that much either, but to be honest it just randomly brought in a whole bunch of stuff that was out of the blue as well. Regarding your praise for the Infinite campaign I'm pretty surprised at that. Cortana had personality and motivations the Banished are just "we want to be the best" there is no backstory to it and there is also no meaningful closure, the dude that gives you the boot at the start of the game is completely absent save for a few holograms for the rest of it. They tried to make the story deep and meaningful through flashbacks but I just didn't care, I would have rathered experience everything discussed rather than just hear about it. The fact that, for me, the dialogue in the cutscenes painted a much more interesting story than the game I was actually playing was rather telling. And then, not only that, but in the final moments they made all of that redundant too (in one of the most blatantly obvious reveals in gaming), they basically made the storyline of the past 5 mainline entries pointless. They might as well have never existed. I would actually be really interested in knowing a person's opinions on why the Infinite storyline is good, because I'm not seeing it, gameplay is amazing (even though some of the upgrades are downright useless by the time you get them), but the story, I don't get the praise.
  • I wrote about the story quite a bit in my review, tho obviously since it's a review I didn't talk about anything specific cuz spoilers.
  • I do agree completely about Halo 4, I really liked the story of that and wished that the Prometheans continued to be the main offensive forces as I found them significantly more interesting to fight than the covenant or the Brute Covenant (sorry, The Banished) of Infinite. I don't agree with Halo 5 though, I think that segregating the story into two didn't work because Spartan Locke just wasn't interesting. At all. It was obvious they were trying to capture the same feel as Halo 2 but I think that worked better as Chief and Arbiter had very different goals that initially had nothing to do with one another and then it was a mutual enemy that brought them together. Chief and Locke, both storylines were just based around the Chief. And the random addition of not just one Spartan, which easily makes sense but having two full squads of new Spartans just wasn't explained at all in game and felt really odd compared to the previous installments. That being said, I loved Chief's storyline in that he was, for the most part a socially awkward "freak" due to his upbringing and training but had actually developed a relationship with another being, even if it was an AI. And was willing to risk everything because he believes there was still "humanity" left in it. And let's face it Cortana was always the Chief's humanity, or conscience. So he couldn't lose it, he couldn't give up on it, because it was a part of him. But all is said and done the game exists as it is, I can't change that and there are plenty of people who did enjoy the storyline. But I can't see myself replaying the campaign like I did the earlier titles just because I'm not invested in the characters any more.
  • I agree with you about halo 5. For those that hadn't read the books and dug deep into the lore bringing back blue team randomly didn't make sense. It doesn't go into any detail as to where they've been or why they've been absent (because that's what it is not that they never existed) IT was circumstance in the previous halo installations that caused master chief to be away from his team. Halo 1 they didn't all make it to forward unto dawn (minus Linda who got hurt and had to go to cryo) before it jumped. Halo 2 they were on another mission when chief got caught in a jump on the covenant ship. Halo 3 was just a continuation of that separation as was halo 4 with infinity (even though blue team should have been on infinity imo). Now for blue team to be absent again and even the elusive gray team to be nonexistent kinda leaves a lot of gaps.