In Response to Halo Infinite Rumor, 343 Remembers a "Cursed" Leak From 2012
Picture a TV with Halo on it. In a barn. With the lights off.
Earlier this week, 343 Industries released a new video that may have included a brief shot of work-in-progress Halo gameplay, and some fans believe the video corroborates a supposed Halo Infinite leak from December. Right now there's no reason to treat the alleged screenshot as anything more than a rumor, but it's worth remembering that genuine Halo leaks in the past have been much weirder—as in "filmed in a barn" weird.
The alleged Infinite leak that has fans squinting at 343's new employee recruitment video was posted to Reddit last month, and consists only of a single blurry photo of a screen. In it, you can see the familiar Halo sniper rifle, a nondescript test environment, and an unfinished heads-up display. The most intriguing part is a button prompt for a grapple hook, a tool that's never been introduced in previous Halo games. Some believe that the supposed leak's heads-up display matches a snippet of gameplay in the 343 recruitment video.
In a thread on the topic at ResetEra, users including 343's franchise development director Frank O'Connor were quick to remember some past Halo leaks that later turned out to be real. The most bewildering leak from the Halo series (and possibly any game) is the so-called Halo 4 barn video, and in response to a user asking why Halo leaks are "always terrible," O'Connor linked to it with a one word comment: "cursed."
The quality of the barn video is incredibly awful, and everything else about it is confusing. It really does appear to have been shot in a barn or shed with the lights turned off, the footage on the TV appears to have been taped to VHS, and horribly compressed music blares throughout the video. For as weird as the barn video is, though, it definitely features footage of Halo 4 that made it out into the world too early. It also references a leak from Halo: Reach where a number of genuine unreleased screenshots with "Tom Morello" haphazardly scrawled across them made their way onto the internet in 2009.
As for whether or not that supposed Halo Infinite leak is real, O'Connor says there's nothing in that recruitment video that 343 doesn't want the world to see.
...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
Leaks can come from anywhere (even barns with vaguely threatening auras), but they're unlikely to tumble out of anything 343 has vetted and released to the public. We'll see more of Halo Infinite soon enough. It's slated to launch for the Xbox Series X, Xbox One, and PC this coming holiday.
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