The Art of Halo Infinite Review

November 23, 2021 at 7:44pm
By Jason Stettner

It’s been a long time since we’ve last visited the world of Halo in a fresh entry. With that, it can be a lot of fun to see the full scope of latest release by taking a look at the artwork behind it. Looking at this specific offering we get a deep die into the characters; weapons and locations you’ll visit while playing the game.

It even has a small section taking a look at what was cut from the campaign and I must say, those areas looked incredible. That aside, I think this is a fairly comprehensive look at the world of this new ring. That of course being the Zeta Halo, or well Installation 07. It’s a place that is apparently filled to the brim with various enemies that have been slightly rebranded as the Banished. Instead of being the Covenant purple color scheme they’re more of a red style.

Anyways, it’s an interesting look at what ended up eventually becoming the full game. It’s very art focused, so I was a tad disappointed not to see more regular in-game renderings as I always though those were neat. We do get to see a lot of model type options to see a breakdown of how characters from both the UNSC (humanity) and Banished came to be.

My favorite part of the book was actually these areas featuring slices of just pure artwork. You got a range of scenarios from wide open vistas to more action oriented spots. It was really peaceful to just sort of take that all in. Again, it would have been neat to see more of the in-game concepts and perhaps even a comparison of this art to the final product. That may sound odd, but in-game visuals are art as well and it would have been neat to see the transference of what they drew.

This is of course a hard cover art book offering like most of this style are. It’s got some stunning cover work that is minimalistic yet really captures the emotive feeling that the game is trying to provide. Something vast, yet back to basics aesthetically. The interior pages are very straight forward in their layout, providing the art at the forefront while giving little bits of detail throughout. You get an introduction from Sparth and a foreword from Frank O’Connor.

Past that, just small blurbs here or there that explain what’s going on in some scenarios. This was helpful when looking at some of that juicy cut content, or some of the ways these different characters are designed in relation to the world they’re inhabiting. In general though, you get a very chunky offering that dives fairly deep into the world of Infinite. It looks great, is clean in presentation and was a pleasure to look through.

The Conclusion

The Art of Halo Infinite is a fantastic deep dive into the world of the Zeta Halo offering a look at the characters; equipment and locations you’ll visit on the ring. You get a good amount of content for most of the areas and my biggest complaint is just a desire to see more of a connection to in-game elements. If you’re purely interested in the concept art and the character designs behind the game you’ll absolutely love this.

If you want to see more of a visually rendered showcase, that really isn’t present here. It’s more focused on the styled art behind it the game. You do get to see some stunning pieces of artwork, the studio definitely has some seriously talented individuals working behind the scenes. As mentioned prior, those segments where you just get to take in image after image of various places was just stunning. Past that, the juicy look at cut content that really gave a sense of scale that we haven’t seen in the games was very cool.

The Art of Halo Infinite Book Review
Author: Sparth
ISBN: 9781506710081
Review Copy Provided by Penguin Random House Canada

Rating Overall: 9.0