The Halo Infinite co-op campaign playtest should be releasing any time now. While initially targeting a July 11th release, that date has come and gone. What’s the holdup? Certification. Once it gets the green light from the certification team, the co-op playtest will go live.
This brings us to how you play it. There are two requirements.
- Sign up for the Halo Insider program. Link here. On Xbox, you’ll also need to download the Xbox Insider app.
- Own Halo Infinite (Campaign). Either buy it or have an active Xbox Game Pass subscription.
On Xbox, you opt into the ‘Network Co-Op flight program’ via the Xbox Insider app. You may run into an issue where an update is needed after first installing the co-op build. If this happens, try giving your Xbox a hard reset (hold power button for 5 seconds and then turn your Xbox back on).
UPDATE: The co-op campaign test is live.
On the Steam side, it’s a little more involved. Halo Waypoint put together a little how-to on getting it to work on Steam.
- Ensure you are signed into your Steam account on the Steam client.
- To redeem the key in the client, select Games at the top and then choose Activate a Product on Steam.
- Follow all prompts on screen to enter and activate the first key found at Halo Waypoint.
- Once activated, the build will appear as “Halo Infinite – Insider” in your Library.
- Right-click on “Halo Infinite – Insider” and select Properties.
- Select the Betas tab, enter “IvoryDuck1194” as the beta access code, and click Check Code.
- After clicking Check Code, select the Opt In button to gain access to the flight branch.
- Select the new “campaign_flight” branch from the dropdown, then click close.
There’s also a troubleshooting section on the link above if you run into any problems.
There are a few things to note about the build. First off, it’s an entirely separate build. Progress already made in the Halo Infinite campaign will not carry over to the upcoming co-op playtest. And vice versa the other way. Progress made in the co-op build will not carry over when co-op support officially launches.
Also, Halo Infinite’s more open-world structure compared to previous games presented 343 with an issue on how far apart players can be. They settled on what they call ‘Area of Operations.’ This works in two parts. Once you stray 800 feet from your fireteam, you’ll get a warning. A kill radius is set at 1000 feet. Think of it like a moving out-of-bounds bubble.
The dev team gave an example of how this works within the game:
To give you an idea of that scale in-game: if two of you want to hit a really big objective like the Banished dig site, the AOO will definitely allow you to tackle an objective of that size from opposite sides with room to spare.
Also, Spartan Cores (used to upgrade your equipment) play a big role in the campaign. During co-op, if one player collects a Core, everyone gets credit for it (who have not already collected that core). Then everyone can decide how they want to allocate the points on Spartan abilities.
The last we heard, 343 is still targeting a late August release date for the official release of campaign co-op. That’ll depend on how well this playtest goes as far as bugs/issues. I’ll keep this post updated if we hear anything different.