Before I go on… this game has GREAT sound design. In the hour that I’ve played, the way sound travels through the environment, echoes, and surrounds you is just fantastic. Melee is gripping, footsteps and player sounds are just smooth and crisp. It’s overall very satisfying to see hear the audio work it’s technical magic.
Unfortunately, this is all butchered by the actual sounds that I’ve heard for a lot of the weapons… 343 seems to be following the route of Halo 5 with the sounds for Covenant weapons, sounding like toy guns or even Star Wars blasters. They have brought back some of the great classic sounds, like the charging hum from the plasma pistol! But as soon as you go for a regular shot, it just sounds absolutley ridiculous. The needler is the biggest dissapointment, you hear a very muffled needler-like sound in the background that’s overpowered by what sounds like a supressed assault rifle. And once you’ve chained your shots into a supercarbine, instead of hearing that satisfying crystaline explosion, you get a smoke grenade sound effect…
I’m genuinely OK with how they did UNSC weapons, a lot more realistic and grounded in nature, with a very nice “punch”. Things like the Sniper and SPNKR don’t sound as good as they used to, but are powerful enough to be acceptable. The Banished introduces new weapons, so I’m open to the brand new sounds that seem to fit in with the mechanical and rusty behavior.
But why deviate so far from the essence of Covenant weapons? Why downgrade their unique sounds? These issues already rooted from Halo 5, even affecting something like the Gravity Hammer. So I expected this to really change in Halo Infinite, but it seems like they are just repeating the same mistakes instead of bringing back the real spirit of covenant weapons…