It's 2026, and I have a confession to make. Every holiday season—and, if I'm honest, plenty of sweaty July nights too—I load into Halo Infinite's Forge mode not because I need another symmetrical Slayer arena, but because I want to be John McClane for about twenty minutes. The map that keeps pulling me back is Faux Plaza, a painstaking recreation of Nakatomi Plaza from Die Hard made by creator Bearly Legal. The first time I spawned into that lobby, my brain did a little yippee-ki-yay backflip.
I've wandered past the rock fountain enough times that it feels less like a video game asset and more like a ghost from an old VHS tape. The meeting rooms are there, quiet and polished, like they're waiting for a Christmas party that will definitely not end well. There's the stairwell where every step sounds way too loud, the area where the hostages were kept, and even the Nakatomi Plaza logo hovering like a smug little reminder that I should probably watch the movie again.
Here's a quick tour of the spots I keep coming back to:
| Location in Faux Plaza | Why it hits me |
| Rock fountain | It's the first thing I see, and it immediately sells the whole movie fantasy. |
| Meeting rooms | Clean, corporate, and just waiting for chaos to kick the door in. |
| Stairwell | Tight sightlines, loud footsteps, and that uneasy action-movie tension. |
| Hostage area | Chilling and too familiar if you've seen the film more than once. |
| Nakatomi Plaza logo | A smug little trophy that makes the whole build feel official. |
Let's be real, though: Forge mode has been flexing its muscles for years now, and the community keeps serving up wild recreations. But Faux Plaza scratches a very specific itch. The trailer shows you can access the elevator shafts, which is cool if you enjoy the sound of your own Spartan boots echoing in a metal box. Unfortunately, you can't crawl through the vents like John McClane, and there's no way to send an enemy flying out the window like Hans Gruber. No dice on the iconic falling villain shot, but I get it—balance matters more than my action-movie fantasies.
The silver lining? Everyone is wearing Mjolnir armor, so the shards of glass scattered around the place don't really ruin your day. In the movie, McClane has to tiptoe through broken glass in bare feet. In Halo Infinite, I can sprint through that same imaginary mess while a plasma grenade bounces past my helmet. The map keeps the soul of the movie, even if it trades barefoot vulnerability for power-armored nonsense.
Beyond Faux Plaza, Halo Infinite's Forge mode has become one of the few reasons I keep returning to multiplayer. I won't sugarcoat it: the game's content rollout has felt slower than a Warthog stuck in mud, and some of my fireteam drifted off. But then someone builds a beloved location, and suddenly Friday night has a plan again. Spartans battling it out in iconic spots is the kind of chaos that makes Forge feel less like a tool and more like a weird, generous party host.
That brings me to the bigger Halo story that still lingers in the back of my helmet. A few years back, I remember reading that Microsoft had filed a patent for Halo: The Endless. Details were scarce, but Halo Infinite's ending teased a looming threat that is said to be 'worse than the Flood.' If that doesn't fog up your visor, I don't know what will. The story got murkier when Paris-based indie studio Amplitude Studios disputed the patent. They felt it infringed on their Endless properties—Endless Dungeon, Endless Space, Endless Legend, Dungeon of the Endless, and Endless Space 2. I'm not a legal expert, so I'll just sit here polishing my battle rifle while the lawyers sort it out.
For now, though, my holiday tradition is simple: load up Faux Plaza, pretend the announcer is screaming 'Yippee-ki-yay,' and see if I can hold the top floor without losing my shields. It may not be Christmas every time I play it, but the feeling is close enough.