Halo Infinite won't let you replay story missions at launch, but the feature is coming

Update: A 343 Industries spokesperson has told Stevivor that the ability to replay campaign missions in Halo Infinite will be added to the game after launch. 

“It’s part of what is coming later,” 343's associate creative director Paul Crocker said. “The main reason [for its absence at launch] is because, being a more open game and a nonlinear game, it became incredibly challenging. It’s not that it doesn’t work, it’s just that it’s not finished. 

“We made the decision to make a better game, to improve the quality of the game so we could then add the features — just like co-op. And that is disappointing for us as the people who made it, but it was, also, the better option for us to make a better game and add that later.”

As for when that feature will arrive, Crocker declined to give a launch window.

Original story:

Halo Infinite's campaign missions won't be replayable unless you start a new save file, a Microsoft spokesperson has confirmed.

Previous Halo games would let you jump between different missions from a select screen, being able to play each one individually as many times as you'd like. It was a quick way to tinker around with different difficulties and add skulls, but Halo Infinite's open world makes things a bit different from the older games. 

While Infinite's map is mostly open and available throughout the entire game, the game's first two missions take place off Zeta Halo, with many other taking place in inaccessable parts of the map. You can't return to these once you've completed them, meaning that any collectables missed are gone for the rest of the save. 

Skulls and armour cache unlocks are tied to your account so they won't disappear when starting a new save, but it's still a bit frustrating that you'll need to start from scratch if you missed an in-mission collectable halfway through the game. Any collectables outside of main missions should still be knocking about in the open world for you to grab anytime, though.

“The postgame does give you the option to keep exploring the wider environment, but for missions like the first two, where you're not on the ring yet, you can't replay from the same save file,” the spokesperson told Polygon. “You'd be able to get any remaining FOBs, targets, [and] audio logs, but the main story missions would not repeat.”

Nat Clayton had a good time with Halo Infinite's campaign, but felt that the whole thing was frustratingly close to greatness. “Halo Infinite is a strong return to form, and in the heat of battle it's the best running and gunning the series has ever had,” she wrote in PC Gamer's review. “It's painfully easy to imagine a world where Infinite could have easily been one of my favourite entries to date. But between an open world that feels largely redundant and a story that can't shed the series' baggage, Halo Infinite's campaign falls just shy of being great Halo.”