Over the January 13-15 vacation weekend, a rumor unfold in regards to the cancellation of an untitled and unannounced Halo battle royale, codenamed Challenge Tatanka. It began with just a few off-hand feedback on a January 13 stream of the XboxEra podcast, during which the three hosts (Jon Clarke, Nick Baker, and Jesse Norris) mentioned hypothesis that the undertaking was canceled. The story unfold like wildfire, with a number of retailers pointing to Baker as a supply, prompting XboxEra to publish an article clarifying the state of affairs and reiterating that that is little greater than a rumor.
So what’s really happening? Is a Halo battle royale in improvement? Is it canceled? Will we even want such a factor? Let’s get into it.
Is Challenge Tatanka a Halo battle royale?
The existence and improvement of this mysterious Halo battle royale is itself a rumor—again in April 2022, Halo help studio Sure Affinity (which has constructed maps for each the Name of Responsibility and Halo franchises, amongst different issues) introduced it was “deepening” its relationship with Halo Infinite developer 343 Industries. Sure Affinity didn’t announce precisely what that “deepening” entailed, however did say that the studio was “entrusted with additional evolving Halo Infinite in some new and thrilling methods.”
In a September 2022 interview with VentureBeat, Sure Affinity’s chief working officer Paul Sams doubled down on the tease, saying “The most important factor we’re doing that’s public proper now, for greater than two years now we’ve been engaged on Halo Infinite doing one thing that—they’re very prescriptive about what we are able to say. However we’re doing one thing unannounced, and we’re doing lead improvement on that unannounced factor, from conception and design.”
In January of final yr, Bloomberg reported that the unknown undertaking was code-named Tatanka and “began off as a battle royale however could evolve in several instructions.”
Regardless of all of this, there has not been an official announcement concerning what Sure Affinity is engaged on, and no affirmation that Tatanka is a Halo battle royale. Xbox Period’s Clarke informed Kotaku by way of e mail that the publication was “shocked it’s a narrative in any respect actually. Kotaku reached out to Sure Affinity for a remark; they declined to produce one.
Some could surprise: Are you able to cancel a sport that was by no means introduced? However I’m questioning: Does anybody desire a Halo battle royale?
Is a Halo battle royale a good suggestion?
There are already two Halo Infinite sport modes which might be paying homage to a conventional battle royale: the now-defunct Final Spartan Standing, a free-for-all elimination mode that includes 12 gamers battling it out on Huge Workforce Battle maps; and the most recent sport’s model of Huge Workforce Battle, which ups the participant depend from 8v8 to 12v12. Final Spartan Standing gave gamers 5 lives earlier than completely eliminating them from the sport, but it surely all the time felt too small for the bigger Huge Workforce maps, and the playlist was changed with Workforce Doubles 4 months after its debut. It hasn’t been again since. And the Huge Workforce Battle mode isn’t something like a battle royale save for its dimension.
The options that make Halo video games particular are precisely what make them the anti-BR: extremely robust weapons and subsequently robust player-characters, a formidable, bombastic sandbox with limitless potential, and absurd automobiles that may make or break a match. None of that’s poised to translate properly right into a battle royale mode, which drops 100 or so gamers into an enormous map (far larger than something we’ve ever seen in Halo Infinite), with both their naked palms or a shitty pistol, and calls for they scurry about like rats till they discover any weapon to maintain them within the warzone. Think about you drop right into a Halo battle royale and instantly discover the rocket launcher? It’s sport over for everybody else.
So no, I don’t assume a Halo battle royale is a good suggestion. Iterating on what makes Halo so particular and persistently updating Halo Infinite is what is going to preserve this franchise alive—not aping no matter is the new commodity in gaming in the intervening time. However who am I, anyway? I’m simply an grownup girl who bought hardcore into on-line gaming with Halo 3 and who spends her spare time enjoying battle royales—how a lot does my opinion matter, proper?