Well, as we’ve seen in the teaser of E3 2018, the trailer for Halo Infinite is more to show what this new engine can do. In some scenes, it is possible to see animals, huts that could possibly be of the UNSC or some other group of humans. Soon after, we see several Marines, who appeared to be wounded, looking for help, and, we see our beloved Master Cheif. Now you wonder, why do I think it will be a free world? By having multiple teaser scenes that show only the world, no scenes indoors. What’s more, Master Cheif puts on his helmet and goes to the warthrog, as if he wants to call in reinforcements or warn that they have found the Marines “lost”, after that you embark on an adventure to survive or do some unknown goal.
I think it’s certainly possible it could be open world, yeah. One wonders why it was absolutely necessary to write an entirely new engine - I fully expected H6, before Infinite was announced, to just run on an improved version of the H5 engine. They keep talking about how they have ambitious new gameplay planned that could not be supported by the old engine, so that could indicate open world design. That could also indicate a very high player count MP mode, too.
Of course about 9,000 things will change before the game is actually released.
Hey OP, there are quite a few topics talking about this in the Infinite forums. Feel free to continue the discussion there 