It's Friday, and I have found another fun thing to share with you all, this time in Halo Infinite's Forge mode.

Halo Infinite's Forge mode has long been used as a canvas for many video game related homages. We have seen the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's iconic Kokiri Forest pop up here, as well as PT's terrifying corridor and Call of Duty's famous Shipment map. Blood Gulch is even in there (although, actually that one wasn't really a surprise, but all the same very cool)

The possibilities this mode can invoke are seemingly endless, and the recent update that came with Season 5: Reckoning has made this even more apparent. You see, developer 343 added the ability to include Campaign AI. This is thanks to the addition of Forge's AI Toolkit and its accompanying suite of features, which means Halo Infinite players can now spawn Grunts and such into their creations.

Here's our Zoe and Ian from the video side of Eurogamer teaming up to take on the Covenant in Halo Infinite.

"They can simply appear in the playable with a default AI Spawner, drop from the sky via an AI Drop Pod Spawner, or have a drop ship insertion courtesy of the AI Phantom Spawner," 343 explained. "In addition to dropping off normal ground units, the AI Phantom Spawner can also drop a Chopper, Ghost, or Wraith, and those vehicles can be set to spawn in unoccupied or with a pilot."

And thanks to this and other new Forge features, we now have another fan-made video game crossover event taking place in Halo Infinite, this time with Pokémon.

Halo player and Forge creator DanTheBloke has constructed a Pokémon-style battle arena in the game, which sees Halo's much more gritty NPCs fighting off against each other atop a delightfully bright Pokémon ball emblem. They even have health bars.

As the battle gets underway, lasers start flying here, there and everywhere, as one by one the spawned fighters get eviscerated. I now want to know who reigned victorious, and will there be a rematch? It is some fun stuff, and a credit to Halo Infinite's recent update (not to mention DanTheBloke's skill and patience).

You can have a watch for yourself below.

A bit of progress:https://t.co/5ZgErIDn2H

— Dan The Bloke (@DanTheBloke) October 18, 2023To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings

I actually got in touch with DanTheBloke after seeing his creation. I wanted to know why he decided that these two games needed to be married together, and what he wanted to do next.

"Basically I've loved Forge since it came to Halo and I've always wanted AI enemies in it, so I was hyped to get stuck into the new season," DanTheBloke told me, adding he enjoyed "seeing how far [they] can push the node scripting". As for those two games becoming one, DanTheMan has always been a "big" Pokémon fan, so this project just made sense.

"The initial video was only about two hours into playing about with it," DanTheBloke continued. "Everything just worked as expected, so it was easy going."

While we have seen the Pokémon-arena as it is now, DanTheBloke still wants to add more to it in the future. This will include a points system "so people don't just spam Hunters", the option to select a weapon and "actual scoring system to determine the winners".

Needless to say, I will be keeping my eyes and ears open for how these developments pan out.