Gears of War developer may have helped out with Halo Infinite

Gears of War studio The Coalition may have contributed to the development of Halo Infinite.

As pointed out on Twitter by user bogorad222, the LinkedIn page of developer Adam Bodden, who worked as a level artist at The Coalition for two years between August 2018 and November 2020, mentions work on the upcoming Halo game. As well as listing Gears 5 and its Hivebusters DLC as "shipped titles," Bodden suggests that he worked on the "announced title: Halo Infinite."

Bodden isn't the only former Coalition developer who says they worked on the next Halo game. Hugo Gutierrez Mares, a VFX artist who worked at the Gears 5 studio from June 2017 to December 2020, said on LinkedIn that he was "working on Halo Infinite mainly on cinematics and campaign," having previously worked on the Gears campaign.

In terms of timing, the apparent contributions from The Coalition line up pretty nicely. Gears 5 launched in September 2019, which would potentially give those developers not tied up with DLC plenty of time to start on another project. Given that both Gears of War and Halo are Microsoft-owned, science-fiction shooters, it's not too big a stretch to suggest there would be a reasonable crossover in terms of expertise, allowing The Coalition devs to help out as Microsoft attempted to get Infinite ready for the Xbox Series X release.

That launch window didn't come together for Microsoft, so it's not clear whether The Coalition developers are still helping out with Halo - now scheduled for a release late this year - or moving back to their own studio's next project. Either way, it's interesting to see that Microsoft was prepared to draw from its other studios to try and get its flagship franchise ready for launch.

While we wait for Halo Infinite, here are some more upcoming Xbox Series X games.