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*Original post. Click at your own discretion.
Halo’s modding community is impressive. You can play as a flood faction in Halo Wars 2, people are creating the biggest multiplayer map in Halo history in Reach filled with Scarabs and devastating flying vehicles, some random guy is also creating a complete set of new and fun vehicles in Halo 3 with custom sound designs - and the game is fairly new on PC! Just go on YouTube and look for yourself! I wanted to post some examples, but it’s really hard to choose from! Plus certain mods for Custom Edition are not allowed on Waypoint, so I’m not talking about your favorite sp mod for the first Halo here my mates! 
But I don’t need that master piece to make my point anyway, because the point is the Halo modding community is thriving right now!
And you know what’s the most astonishing factor about all this? Neither the MCC nor the HW got modding tools right now. Yes, you read that right: some crazy talented people are creating marvelous things with Halo right now, even though their are extremely limited by what can actually do. Adding new content is basically impossible right now - everything is made by manipulating existing assets, even textures can only change color by modifying some diffuse options. Hence why everything you see around the web is basically base Halo changed around, it’s because there are no official mod-tools yet.
Halo Custom Edition (aka Combat Evolved on PC) on the other hand has such software in their belt. It’s a Windows Vista game, fairly hard to find, has tons of issues, bugs, visuals are worse than on OG XBox, it’s really old… But people are still playing because mods. Think about that! Because people have no limits there, what modders created and are still putting out is outstanding to say the least! Even though the process is fairly complex even with such tools compared to other games. Blam is an old and hard to use engine after all! Now think what those good folks could create with Slipspace!
<strong>*Side note: What are modding tools in first place?</strong>
Modding tools btw for who doesn’t know, are a set of construction, assets and simple programming languages for the given engine to create various modification and changes. TES and Fallout basically thrive just thanks to how amazing those tools are, even though the engine has become obsolete on the grand scale of things. To those software packages often also come with open-source coding and mod content managers. Those are basically helpful overlays to install the modded content as well as working like start-up interfaces. I guess most people on a gaming forum would already know this it, but as an additional info dump here you go!Maybe with Slipspace - if it’s true that creating content is a lot easier now - Halo Infinite could be the new Custom Edition of our era.
I truly think that Halo Infinite needs a community of creators that go way beyond Forge to keep the game running for a decade and more. I doubt the GAAS system filled with a battlepass alone would do the trick. I mean, the base gameplay is maybe not what I wanted, but it does look solid and fun! It doesn’t matter what you think about classic Halo vs. H5, at least on a gameplay level what we saw in the trailer is a good base for the future imho. I doubt however with their lack of innovation and fairly disappointing showcasing on the visuals side of things that Hi could ever sustain their 10 years plans without more fan involvement. And to involve fans you need something more that barely no other game has. We have a modding fanbase already, why not gathering towards them than?
Let’s be frank, if the game has nothing unique to offer and on op of that the visuals aren’t at an acceptable level on launch, the player-base risk once again to die out quickly. That would be the end of Halo! Maybe the f2p multiplayer can partially salvage that, but the competition will be strong in this regards as well. Mods on the other side - especially with our amazing community - would be a trump card that nobody else can put on the table aside of TES. That’s a fact!
I already can imagine the incredible things the community can come up with on both sp and mp side of things, but it would only bloom and explode if mod tools are available at or even before launch! I’m thinking gameplay overhauls, new maps, third person perspectives, guns, enemies, maybe modified AI behaviors, skyboxes, some edgy cut-scene, some crazy yoink like flying trains instead of dropships, drivable Scarab side-mission and so on! Mods would make this game endless, I’m convinced about this!
Who knows? Maybe we could get a content browser where you can test community created mods out and rate them. The most successful ones or those chosen by 343i could even make an appearance on Series X! It could even spark side-projects and whole different modes that Forge alone could never grant! And I’m not even trying to downplay the importance of Forge, but that mode should be a tool to enhance the existing content and modding tools should be thing that keep creatives on PC an their community hooked to Halo. The best stuff would become part of the main experience on console down the road - if a powerful content browser is present that is!
Mods will grant Halo Infinite’s success, I’m certain about that! But only if you permit us to make them 343i!