Halo Infinite‘s multiplayer has bots for the first time in the history of the franchise, and while the AI soldiers are capable combatants who try to play like real humans, they will never taunt players after a kill, at least not intentionally. Developer 343 Industries confirmed this to Eurogamer and said any evidence that this might be the case from the recent multiplayer test was only a bug.
“We never want to punish learning, especially not by having bots engage in behaviors that a player could feel is exclusionary. For that reason, we don’t have explicit programming that tells the bots to teabag or taunt you in any way,” the developer explained.
343 clarified that the primary purpose of bots in Halo Infinite is to help players learn the ropes and get comfortable on the multiplayer battlefield. This is seemingly more important than ever considering that Halo Infinite’s multiplayer mode is free-to-play, opening it up to a potentially much wider audience than ever before.
“We want players to feel comfortable making mistakes against bots, because making mistakes means you’re improving and working on skills you haven’t mastered yet,” 343 said.
In the recent Halo Infinite beta test, which mostly consisted of human players fighting against bots, videos emerged that seemed to show the bots taunting players after kills. But this was only a bug, according to 343. “A bot’s feet would leave the ground very briefly, then play a landing animation when they failed the jump, and they’d get stuck in an animation loop that could look like crouching rapidly. If that happened to be observed shortly after a kill, or near a player’s body, it can definitely feel like an intentional behavior. In reality, the bot was just struggling to go up the stairs,” 343 said.
“The bots are meant to be welcoming and fun for players of all skill levels, and a feature designed to taunt a player would oppose that goal.”
Another Halo Infinite multiplayer beta is planned, so if you didn’t get into the first one, you still have a chance for the next one. There is no word yet on when this second test will take place or how it may differ from the first one, but one thing is for sure: you need to sign up for Halo Insider to get in.
For more, check out GameSpot’s video above in which we run through five important things to know about Halo Infinite’s multiplayer.
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