Halo Infinite Creative Director Tim Longo has left developer 343 Industries. This information comes from Kotaku who first heard rumors that Longo had left the studio. When they reached out to Microsoft, the company confirmed Longo’s departure.
“We have recently had two changes to the Halo Infinite development team,” reads a statement from Microsoft. ”Our Executive Producer, Mary Olson, will now take charge of the Campaign team on Halo Infinite as the Lead Producer, utilizing her many years of experience at 343 to help craft a great campaign for fans. Additionally, Tim Longo has recently departed our team and we are truly thankful for his many contributions to our games, our studio, and the Halo universe. We wish Tim nothing but the best in his future endeavors.”
The statement goes on to say that “The overall creative vision and production of the game remains led by Chris Lee,” which would seem to be their way of suggesting that development of the game is pretty much business as usual despite the recent shifts and departures.
Is it though? In and of itself, we suppose the departure of Longo might not actually be that big of a deal. He was the creative director of Halo 5, and certainly appeared to be just as involved with the development of Halo: Infinite, but we’re willing to accept that this departure is just one of those things that happen from time to time.
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The problem is that nobody really knows what to make of Halo Infinite at this point. That also makes it difficult to know what to make of this departure. We’ve heard a lot of talk about how Halo Infinite is a spiritual reboot, but there’s a lot of debate about what that really means. Even the game’s first trailer doesn’t shed much light on what it’s is really about or what we should expect from it.
What we do know is that Microsoft is almost certainly banking on Halo Infinite being a big deal given that it’s the first confirmed launch game for Xbox Scarlett. Whether or not this departure affects the game’s creative direction (or its development schedule for that matter) remains to be seen.
Matthew Byrd is a staff writer for Den of Geek. He spends most of his days trying to pitch deep-dive analytical pieces about Killer Klowns From Outer Space to an increasingly perturbed series of editors. You can read more of his work here or find him on Twitter at @SilverTuna014.
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