343 Industries’ game may have finally been shaken up after a change in studio management.

Halo Infinite season 3 was supposed to be released in November. That didn’t happen, and a winter update (Forge mode, for example) came instead, but it didn’t change the point: the game’s second season lasted ten months. Sean Baron, head of live services at 343 Industries, promised that from now on, content updates will come at more regular and stable intervals: “Seasonality is really about consistency – we need to be consistent in everything. I feel very confident with where we’ve gone with Season 3, and I have powerful confidence that we will be able to keep improving that consistency and avoid, completely the long seasons of the past. We’re going to be more consistent. We will continue to evolve the game in close partnership with our players. We’re focused on shipping Season 3, and then, as Chief said, we’re ‘Ready to get back to work.'”

The third season will feature the Oasis Big Team Battle maps and the traditional Arena maps Cliffhanger and Chasm. The Chasm is deep in a Forerunner with a long, suspended walkway to fight on, and Cliffhanger is on an asymmetrical ONI outpost tucked away at the top of a snowy hill. Oasis is set in an asymmetrical UNSC site in a desert landscape. The Escalation Slayer mode has been added, as well as a Community Collection Playlist where you can earn XP by playing the maps of the creators in Forge mode (e.g., Art’s Room is Toy Story-like). The Shroud Screen gadget lets you hide your movement, the M392 Bandit rifle is similar to the M392 MDR, but there will also be new events, such as a narrative event pair and Firewall Fracture.

“Season 3 will feature two separate Echoes Within events. These narrative events will each last two weeks and feature different 10-item Event Passes. The first of these events, Mindfall, will run March 7 –  21. Stay tuned to the News section of Halo Waypoint for the latest updates on the Site Unseen event. Season 3’s Fracture event will provide players multiple weeklong opportunities to complete Event Challenges in the new Escalation Slayer mode and earn up to 20 rewards. While the Season 3 Battle Pass features customization items for the MIRAGE IIC Armor Core, the free Fracture: Firewall Event Pass features customization items for the Chimera Armor Core. Like the Echoes Within events, these customization items can only be earned by completing Event Challenges while the event is active.,” 343 Industries says.

What about ray-tracing shadows? The studio also talked about it: “Players on PC can now toggle Raytraced Sun Shadows from the Settings menu. When this feature is enabled, all shadows cast by the sun will appear more detailed in multiplayer gameplay. The Raytraced Sun Shadows option does not apply to the Halo Infinite Campaign. Ray Tracing requires DXR Tier 1.1 support and functions with AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series and later, as well as GeForce RTX 2000 Series and later. If your hardware does not support Ray Tracing, the option will be grayed out in the Video settings menu. This option will be available on Xbox Series X in a future update for Halo Infinite.”

More details here.

Source: WCCFTech