After being cancelled back in 2022, a new report claims that Halo’s long-rumored battle royale mode was reworked into an extraction shooter.

Following the launch of Halo Infinite in 2021, there were plenty of reports and rumors that a battle royale was in the works. This would have been released as a standalone PvP mode, similar to how Call of Duty handles Warzone.

If leaks were to be believed, it was originally supposed to drop in 2022, but it never saw the light of day and former devs have since revealed that it was cancelled. However, according to a fresh report, the mode wasn’t completely scrapped, but instead moulded into something new.

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In a video from Rebs Gaming, a reliable Halo leaker, he explained that the Halo battle royale (codenamed Project Tatanka) had its development paused in late 2022. It then evolved into Project Eker, a PvE extraction shooter being made in Unreal Engine.

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The last known update about the game/mode was in summer 2023, but it’s not clear at the time of writing how far along it is, or if it will be released as a standalone experience.

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According to one of Rebs’ sources, Certain Affinity, the team co-developing the battle royale, has turned its attention to the next full Halo game, so it’s possible that it has been “absorbed” and will instead be a multiplayer mode in this new title.

There are also very few details about how the extraction shooter looks and plays, but Reebs did reveal some details about the battle royale mode that could carry over. It was apparently set to be based around a “training simulation” on a UNSC ship to prepare Spartans for Zeta Halo.

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The map would have been littered with classic Halo maps, including Blood Gulch and Valhalla, and players would have entered the map using drop pods. Nothing has been confirmed, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to see some of these elements stick around in the extraction mode, too.

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Halo fans had been desperate for a battle royale for many years, after games like Fortnite and Apex Legends made the genre popular. But given the rise of extraction shooters such as Arc Raiders and Marathon, it sounds like Halo Studios is trying to join this latest craze.

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