Report: Halo Studios scrapped battle royale-extraction shooter hybrid

A report from YouTuber HiddenXperia claims Halo Studios once developed a multiplayer game that combined battle royale and extraction shooter elements, and that the project was ultimately scrapped during the production of Halo: Campaign Evolved. The claims were reported by gamesradar.com.

According to the report, the project began as a pure battle royale game codenamed Project Tatanka, set on a playable space that combined multiple recognizable Halo multiplayer maps. It reportedly later evolved into Project Ekur, an extraction shooter set on Zeta Halo where squads drop in and the map shrinks as it does in battle royales.

Sources cited in the report say players could control either a UNSC Spartan or, for the first time, a Banished Brute. The Flood were said to be a computer-controlled faction that would infect parts of the map and serve as a narrative bridge toward a future Halo 7.

The extraction shooter concept was reportedly dropped when the studio chose to build a more traditional Halo multiplayer game in Unreal Engine instead. That traditional multiplayer project was also reportedly scrapped, as developers were moved to help with Halo: Campaign Evolved's production.

Project Tatanka was in production sometime during and after Halo Infinite's development. Last month, Xbox's sweeping restructure essentially gutted Halo Studios, leaving a small team supporting ongoing Halo games, events and an upcoming novel; the layoffs came only weeks after the studio shipped Halo: Campaign Evolved, a campaign-only remake of the first Halo game.