Halo Infinite’s “Become Master Chief” promotion is simultaneously the best and worst idea Microsoft have had.
Well, it’s their worst idea since pushing the Xbox One as a multimedia device, anyway. Halo Infinite is just over a week away and, on top of putting out a new two minute trailer, have unveiled a new promotion that lets you put yourself into a shorter trailer.
How does this wizardry work? You have to go to the Become Master Chief website, at which point you’ll be prompted to grant the site access to your webcam. If you choose to do so, the site will take a picture of you and use it to create a rendered version of your face.
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The site will, in turn, insert that face into a custom trailer. The custom trailer will show “your” face at the beginning, then there’s a brief flash towards the end of the trailer, just as Master Chief is about to bludgeon Gorilla Grodd. It’s pretty cool, we’ll certainly admit.
Only.. Microsoft really hasn’t thought this through. People have already started feeding celebrity faces into the site, presumably by spoofing their camera output. So far Master Chief has been ex-President Barack Obama and ex-Spider-Man Toby Maguire. So far, so silly.
But, the internet being the internet, it can only be a matter of time before someone feeds the image of a more infamous individual into the site. We’re not going to name names, because we don’t want to give anyone any ideas, but it’s almost certainly going to happen. We’d be very surprised, in fact, if the Become Master Chief site is still up at the end of the week.
Halo Infinite hits Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Xbox Game Pass this December 8th.
