Cancelled Halo 7 gets teased by devs as studio disperses; we were robbed

After the news that Activision would be taking over the Halo franchise, fans are understandably worried for the future of the series, and as if to rub salt in the wound, Halo Studios devs just shared a glimpse of its now-cancelled next game.

Halo 7, if it were to be called that, would have been a direct follow-up to Halo: Infinite.

Despite its imperfections, Halo: Infinite was a wonderful return to form for the series. It was a spiritual reboot that threw away the controversial art style of Halo 4 and Halo 5: Guardians in favour of more traditional, but modernised, designs.

However, the biggest problem with Halo: Infinite was how empty it felt. The ‘open-world’ was barren and stylistically repetitive, and it felt like fans were sold half of a story.

Now Halo Studios has shared several glimpses as to where that story could have gone had they retained control of the series.

Gaming and Halo influencer HiddenXperia collated the concept art images on X, and while they’re clearly just early designs and frames of reference, they tease some big developments.

Halo 7 leaked concept art paints a bold picture of the franchise’s future

For starters, we see where the UNSC Infinity ended up after the war with The Banished. It looks like its crash site would have either been set dressing for a new open-world area or the setting of a level akin to the Pillar of Autumn in Halo: Combat Evolved.

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A mysterious city was also shown off, believed to be tied to the Forerunners. It looks like the game would have delved deeper into their history and relationship with the new villain: The Endless.

Speaking of The Endless, we get to see the full, planned pantheon. While many were unimpressed with their introduction in Halo: Infinite I was actually quite fond of the idea, and keen to see more.

Interestingly, there’s nothing alluding to Atriox, the leader of the Banished who was believed to be dead during the events of Halo: Infinite, but reappears at the end in a post-game teaser.

These Halo 7 concepts further prove that Halo: Infinite fans were robbed

It’s said the original plan for Halo: Infinite was to make it a constantly expanding and evolving storyline. Post-launch DLCs would add new story content and new parts of Zeta Halo to explore.

At some point these plans were scrapped, but had the original plan gone ahead, we probably would have seen these newly released images brought to life via DLC.

Now, speaking as a Halo fan myself, I can’t say I was ever fond of the idea of Halo: Infinite having a live-service single-player, but I would have happily taken it over what we have now.

Rumour has it that Activision is planning a full reboot for the franchise, with a Master Chief origin story paving the way.

There’s no doubt that Halo Studios mismanaged the franchise from the very beginning, but it felt like the story was finally going somewhere I could follow with Halo: Infinite. Plus, I was excited for more remakes like Halo: Campaign Evolved.

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