Former Halo Infinite Dev Says Canceled Battle Royale Mode Could’ve Been A ‘Game Changer’ For Series

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The canceled Battle Royale mode for Halo Infinite could have been a “game changer” for the series, according to a former developer.

According to the LinkedIn profile of Mike Clopper (via), Studio Design Director at Raven Software and former Game Director at Certain Affinity, he had led a large team of designers working on a canceled Battle Royale mode for Halo Infinite. The team had been working on the project for a duration of over one year, between the period of January, 2021 and March, 2022.

Clopper shared his belief that the Battle Royale mode for Halo Infinite could have been a game changer for the franchise. He  further mentioned that he loved playing it and working on the project was a fantastic experience in spite of its cancellation.

While no official details on the aforementioned canceled Halo battle royale mode are available, Halo enthusiast reporter and content creator Rebs Gaming had recently shared some details regarding its gameplay and world map during his recent YouTube video. He mentioned that he spoke to a former Halo developer who had worked on and tested the project (codenamed Tatanka) and had shared specific information with him.

The content creator mentioned that Tatanka started as a battle royale mode for Halo Infinite that would tie into Joe Staten’s campaign narrative. The map took place on some of the smaller fragments of Zeta Halo, and each fragment contained different biomes and man-cannons to launch players to other fragments. Players would have started each match in a launch bay and dropped into the map in ODST drop pods. According to the source, the reason behind Halo Battle Royale’s cancellation was that, despite having a great concept, the title was far from a state in which it could have been released, and 343 Industries doesn’t have the resources to support such a mode with a steady flow of new content.