Halo Infinite’s first live event, Fractures: Tenrai, is a bust. But the silver lining to a cloud of poorly-considered challenges, cosmetics and progression woes has been the return of Fiesta, a fan-favourite mode that spawns you with two random weapons and a random piece of equipment.
It’s daft fun, but don’t get too used to it. 343 this weekend confirmed that Fiesta will vanish tomorrow evening, not to be seen again until Tenrai returns sometime next January.
The Fracture: Tenrai event ends on Tuesday, November 30, at 10 AM PT. The Fiesta event playlist will be unavailable until the Tenrai event returns to #HaloInfinite in January 2022. More info: https://t.co/nKNwtzMG7bNovember 28, 2021
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Fiesta’s absence hits somewhat sour after an event that’s already exacerbated a lot of existing frustrations with Halo Infinite. While Tenrai’s reward structure is a mess, Fiesta was legitimately fun—letting you go hog wild with the entire sandbox. Infinite has loads of strange weapons with unique mechanics, but often only appear once or twice on a map. It’s not often an entire team gets to whip themselves around the map with rockets and hammers at the same time. Thanks to random vehicle spawns, I’ve also probably gotten more hands-on time with the Banshee and Wraith than I’ve ever had in Big Team Battle (where they rarely spawn at all).
When even casual quickplay can get intense, Fiesta offered some good old fashioned brain-off Halo nonsense.
But the fleeting nature of Fiesta also has folks worried about the future of Halo’s other legacy modes. Infinite launched with a sparse selection of gametypes, omitting series staples like SWAT, Infection, Grifball and, yes, Fiesta. There’s a worrying sentiment on Reddit that these will themselves be limited to future week-long events.
It’s currently unclear whether Fiesta will remain available as a mode for custom games (where, through a little tweaking, some players have discovered an entire arsenal of powerful variations on existing weapons). And sure, Tenrai will return in January, and then 3 more times over the course of the season.
But alongside a thoroughly underwhelming event track, limited customisation and a battle bass that sucks, week-long temporary modes are only compounding the sense that Halo Infinite’s multiplayer has been stretched thin.