Last week Halo Infinite developer 343 Industries released a recruitment video that eagle-eyed fans poured over for clues regarding the anticipated sequel, which releases later this year on Xbox Series X, Xbox One, and PC. The video featured some off-screen footage of the what is presumably Halo Infinite, but it didn't seem to initially be noteworthy.
That is, at least until some fans cross-referenced the footage with a screenshot of Halo Infinite that leaked almost a month ago. The screenshot in question was notable because of a single UI icon it featured, suggesting that Master Chief would have a grappling hook to navigate the new open-world that Infinite is introducing. Fans speculated on ResetEra that the UI in 343's new recruitment video matched that of the leak, lending it credibility.
343 Industries' franchise development director Frank O'Connor was following the speculation, even going as far to cheekily link to a now infamous Halo 4 leak when responding to a question over why Halo leaks always have terrible quality. Addressing the speculation directly, however, O'Connor replied on Twitter, saying that 343 combs through all footage that they put out, and that no gameplay footage in the recruitment video is of any importance.
You know we scrub these for accidental leaks right? (Thanks for nothing 4k!) gray box/forge thing you’re looking at doesn’t show anything meaningful and isn’t even necessarily content from Infinite. Sometimes they’re just test environments or cut outs of H5 prototyping work... pic.twitter.com/uVS2LTwO34
— Frank O'Connor (@franklez) January 31, 2020
...and sometimes just stuff from dev that we decided doesn’t constitute anything meaningful or meaningful intended to ship.
— Frank O'Connor (@franklez) January 31, 2020
Most of this speculation is down to 343 Industries having kept very tight-lipped about the gameplay aspects of Halo Infinite, which is expected to change the standard Halo formula. Only a short in-game cinematic was shown at E3 2019, leaving many unanswered questions ahead of Infinite's 2020 launch date for both Xbox One and Xbox Series X.