Okay, Halo Infinite Forgers. You had my curiosity. Now you have my attention.
Halo Infinite Forge creator Blupe Vave has published a work-in-progress multiplayer map called Crumbling Lands, recreating one of the last dungeons from FromSoftware's Elden Ring, Crumbling Farum Azula. I can't think of two game aesthetics much more distinct than Halo and Elden Ring, and yet this map looks incredible. It's so authentic to Elden Ring, my first instinct was to assume that Blupe Vave had actually imported a pile of Elden Ring assets into Halo Infinite somehow.
But nope: it just shows how much you can do with the Forge mapmaking tool, if you have the skill and patience to pull it off.
Rebs Gaming highlighted the map on Twitter, and you can find the current "playtest v1" iteration of Crumbling Lands on the Halo Infinite content browser at this link. The map isn't currently public, but you can bookmark it with the link and play it in Infinite anyway. I popped in for a quick walkthrough, and after the initial shock it's obvious this is a Forge map—it isn't nearly as ornate as the actual Crumbling Farum Azula from Elden Ring, while the lighting is a bit flatter, with fewer torches strewn around than in the real thing.
But Blupe Valve's map nails the look of the crumbling world with meticulous detail. There are melting candles all over the place that do cast a bit of golden lighting in the hallways, and outside there's tons of debris floating in the void at odd angles. There are platforms you can jump to suspended in the air and curving, sloped walkways that look close enough to FromSoftware assets to give me deja vu.
Crumbling Lands is a small map—I can imagine a substantial portion of the map budget has gone to the debris floating around at the margins—but I think the finished version is going to be a hit in Halo custom games. It'll at least be one of the more surreal playfields for a game of slayer.
Check out Blupe Vave's trailer for the map above. It's currently the only video on their YouTube channel, but presumably there's more to come as the map shapes up.
