Battle royale modes and games continue to live on in evergreen popularity, especially now. Fortnite‘s latest explosion in popularity with Chapter 2, Season 5 has shown no signs of slowing down for Epic Games. Call of Duty: Warzone continues its streak as one of the most popular options, especially now that it’s fully integrated with the latest Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Apex Legends is also seeing a resurgence in momentum with Season 7, and Season 8 coming very soon. As for Halo fans who enjoy battle royale modes, at least Master Chief made it into Fortnite. For those looking for a true-to-form Halo battle royale, well, it doesn’t exist quite yet.
Arguably, the classic Halo multiplayer foundation does lend itself particularly well to a battle royale mode. Many of the mainstay mechanics, items, and equipment in the most popular battle royales (Fortnite, Apex Legends, Warzone) were elements of traditional Halo multiplayer previously. However, that’s not to say it’d be an easy entrance into the subgenre for Microsoft’s flagship shooter. Numerous battle royales have also saturated the market as well, with many failing to strike a following among a sea of other battle royales. 343 Industries is not immune to a similar fate, and Halo Infinite would need to seriously switch things up to make a successful battle royale.
For one thing, the usual Halo multiplayer foundation lends itself particularly well to a battle royale mode. Conceptually speaking, many of the mechanics in battle royale games/modes like picking up weapons, finding powerups or special abilities around the environments, and tangentially some of the objective-based modes resemble a battle royale archetype. Finding power weapons in Halo multiplayer is always the name of the game, which coincidentally is what most battle royale games do as well. Power-ups like Overshield and Active Camo, equipment from Halo 3-ownard, and the armor abilities from Halo Reach, all would have their place in a Halo battle royale.
Not to mention some of the larger maps in Halo history could potentially be framed for battle royale, if expanded. Some of the larger maps like Forge World, Valhalla, or Boneyard would be interesting to see kind of mashed together into one big battle royale map. There’s a lot of examples throughout Halo‘s backlog of incredible map design that could potentially form together into a great battle royale map. Plus, Halo‘s experimented with large scale multiplayer modes with Big Team Battle and Invasion previously, so a battle royale mode wouldn’t exactly be out of pocket for the series. Implemented appropriately, a battle royale concept for Halo could be great.
However, like most other battle royale game modes, Halo‘s battle royale attempt could easily become overshadowed in an oversaturated market. Especially if Halo‘s battle royale mode doesn’t particularly change up the formula in any way, it’s not going to have much going for it other than Halo gameplay mechanics. As previously mentioned, many of the battle royale conventions like power ups and power weapons already exist in classic Halo multiplayer. Implementing those same mechanics, in a subgenre of shooters that already features many of those capabilities, wouldn’t distinguish Halo‘s battle royale offering apart from any other currently available to play.
The effectiveness of Halo‘s gameplay loop is emphasized in the traditional, small-scale multiplayer modes like Slayer and Capture the Flag. Halo doesn’t have building mechanics, or any comparatively unique movement mechanics compared to examples like Apex Legends. Even with the exception of Halo Infinite‘s grappling hook, there’s no way the mode wouldn’t draw comparisons to Pathfinder in Apex Legends anyway. Even though Halo Infinite‘s multiplayer will be totally free-to-play at launch, a battle royale mode doesn’t necessarily fit alongside the traditional offering from Halo multiplayer, regardless of whether it could or not.
This is without even mentioning the numerous times Halo Infinite battle royale rumors have been shot down this year by 343 Industries. Even as recent as last month, 343 Industries’ community director Brian Jarrard reiterates these rumors are “unfounded,” further reinforcing that Halo Infinite has no current battle royale in development. 343 Industries’ studio head Bonnie Ross has also echoed this sentiment previously, stating that battle royale’s popularity (for now) doesn’t factor in to Halo‘s repertoire.
That’s not to say it’s impossible, and assuming 343 Industries is capable of shaking some things up, Halo Infinite could get a battle royale in the future. But for now, it just might not be feasible for Microsoft’s iconic shooter.
Halo Infinite is planned to release in fall 2021.
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