343 Industries Responds to Battle Royale Rumors for HALO INFINITE

There are a number of rumors going around about 343 Industries’ Halo Infinite. We know the game is said to be a spiritual reboot of the franchise, but not much else has officially been released. We recently heard a rumor that the game will feature a mode similar to battle royale, but with a twist. Well, Frank O’Conor of 343 has given a statement in regard to that rumor:

“We will not talk about the launch content of Halo Infinite until we’re ready. I haven’t watched the video [Sams’ report] so if I am misinterpreting the headline as ‘Halo Infinite is launching with/as a Halo Battle Royale mode’ that is still not the case. You can probably make your own battle royale mode in Forge even right now though. It’s a mode not a genre. And all the variants out there now are in my opinion quite radically different from my perspective.

Apex vs Fortnite is chalk and cheese - one focuses on movement and map traversal and the other on building and budgeting. Like CTF. BTB Super Fiesta (for example) contains a lot of the shenanigans and emergent fun of that kind of large experience, but big sandbox modes are not battle royale any more than Oddball is CTF. The launch modes for MP are not 100% defined and are subject to change till quite late in the process - but Battle Rifle will still be there. So you can have BR. But are we interested in big social modes with loads of organic shenanigans? Yes. Specifically a blimp full of survivors heading to an island after a (metaphorical) lecture from Beat Takeshi? No.

We are NOT doing this as of now - and no plans to — but Battle Royale could be made for any of the Halo games in MCC or 5 with some content and scripting additions, because it is a mode. It would have limits based on each engine. I’m pointing that out to be clear that it’s one of the ways we think about gameplay possibilities rather than a single direction for a title.”

OK, so O’Conor says that there will not be a battle royale mode. He also says that fans could use the Forge in Halo games to create such a mode. However, as he continues to talk, things seem to be less black and white as O’Conor would like us to believe.

He’s very insistent that “battle royale” is a game mode and not a genre and goes on to talk about how different all of these battle royale games are. He continues to say that the modes available in Halo Infinite could still change and they’re interested in “big social modes with loads of organic shenanigans,” which screams something at least similar to a battle royale mode in the current culture. Also, he does keep noting that it would not be hard to bring such a game mode to any Halo game.

To me, it sounds like O’Conor is saying that Halo Infinite may end up with a mode similar to battle royale at some point, but they don’t want everyone thinking it’s just another battle royale game as that would merely be one small part of the bigger game. This is understandable as there are a fair number of negative views about games that are based on battle royale gameplay.

Halo Infinite is currently in development for PC and Xbox One with no release date announced yet.

Via: CB