Alongside skulls and an obsession with the number “7,” secret endings have long been a staple of the Halo series. Beating each game’s campaign on the nail-bitingly hard Legendary difficulty typically yields a hidden ending that expands upon the events of each campaign’s story, or offers a tease for the next Halo game. Halo Infinite is already missing a few of the series’ mainstay elements, such as a co-op campaign, Firefight, and Forge mode, so one might assume that other familiar elements, like a secret Legendary ending, might have been cut as well. Fortunately, that’s not the case.
Halo Infinite does have a Legendary ending, and you unlock it as you would in any other Halo game: Simply complete the game on the Legendary difficulty. However, this is much easier said than done. Playing on Legendary makes for quite the challenge, especially during the game’s various boss fights.
As for what the Legendary ending is, we’ll explain that here. Spoiler warning: Halo Infinite ending and Legendary ending details ahead.
Halo Infinite’s post-credits scene reveals Atriox, who was believed to have died prior to Master Chief’s arrival on Zeta Halo, to be alive. He’s shown interacting with a terminal, which causes a group of Forerunner-built objects to start moving around. The Legendary ending plays out the exact same way, but this time the cutscene features a conversation between two mysterious figures, Despondent Pyre and the Grand Edict. The conversation is rather cryptic, with references to the Endless — the group to which one of Infinite’s villains, the Harbinger, belongs — alongside mention of serving an entity called “The Criterion.” The conversation indicates that the Endless have been imprisoned. In interacting with the terminal, Atriox seems to be freeing them.
The conversation ends with the Grand Edict stating that Offensive Bias has been deployed. Within Halo’s lore, Offensive Bias is a Forerunner AI who commanded a Forerunner fleet towards the end of the Forerunner-Flood war. It was created to counter Mendicant Bias, another Forerunner AI who had defected to the Flood. Offensive Bias led the Forerunners to victory, in large part due to its raw computing power, which allowed the AI to control numerous pieces of technology, including a whole Halo ring, simultaneously. The AI is also noted for its lethality.
The threat the Endless pose, how Atriox intends to use them, and how Offensive Bias will factor into the series going forward remain to be seen. Based on the grim, foreboding nature of the ending, it seems likely the Atriox-led Endless will be the next major antagonistic force in the Halo series, akin to the Flood. It’s possible Offensive Bias could be humanity’s key to stopping them in a future Halo game.
