There’s no question that the reveal of Halo Infinite has been divisive, with both fans of the series and PS5 stans taking aim at some shoddy character models and graphic problems in the gameplay reveal. Thankfully, developer 343 Industries seems keen to make hay out of the virality of the brute — now named Craig. With diverging paths between both PS5 and Xbox Series X, this PR move shows how laid back this generation’s console war truly is.
Giving a quick recap, after much hyping by Phil Spencer and the larger Xbox brand, there were more than a few people who left wanting more from the most powerful home console of next generation. Now, perhaps Halo fans are being uncharitable, with most of the images being taken from the original stream with a latency and resolution impact. The experts over at Digital Foundry did an excellent breakdown on how the graphic problems would be solved by simply supporting raytracing techniques for PC and Xbox Series X:
In any case, the impression of the game got memed to hell, with a lot of images focusing on a fairly ugly Brute. Named ‘Craig’ by the meme community on Reddit, things took off pretty quickly:
Craig from r/okbuddyretard
Capturing what could have been a bad PR moment, the 343 Industries Community Director Brian Jarrard decided to just own Craig. Asking the community to build a Halo Infinite lore and to send memes, Jarrard fully leaned into some literal bad optics in a great way:
Send me your Craig memes.
— Brian Jarrard (@ske7ch) July 24, 2020
In case you haven’t seen some of these, here are our favorites:
The moment Master Chief and Craig saw each other, they just knew this new friendship would be amazing pic.twitter.com/uZNxH94sNb
— Seamus Clerkin (@The_Seamoose) July 24, 2020
— Jordan Wharton (@Writing_Spartan) July 24, 2020
— BIGHEAD #XBOX (@joseneto245) July 24, 2020
— ゴジラ (@UI_Goji) July 24, 2020
Not to mention our submission:
https://t.co/p9dy0WDIzr pic.twitter.com/7Ge7PVrG3W
— DualShockers (@DualShockers) July 26, 2020
We actually have no doubt that 343 Industries will pull together any graphical issues that exist in the current build of Halo Infinite, especially given the game is likely going to serve as a multi-generation spanning platform. More important is how smart the Xbox brand has gotten about handling bad PR in new generation cycles — whether or not you are planning on getting the console Day 1, you have to admit this is lightyears better than the Xbox One gaffes that gave PS4 the generational lead.
In fact, there is even a sect of Halo fans that now want Craig’s storyline and memory cemented in the lore of Halo Infinite as an easter egg. Kind of like what Bungie has done in remembrance of the infamous “Loot Cave” saga.
In any case, Halo Infinite is planning to launch on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X sometime in Holiday 2020. If you are planning on jumping into the new release, you might want to get caught up on the series at large. You can grab Halo: The Master Chief Collection physically over on Amazon to help support DualShockers.
The post Halo Infinite Is Officially Leaning Into the ‘Craig’ Brute Meme by Lou Contaldi appeared first on DualShockers.