Certain Affinity's Halo Project Is Codenamed "Tatanka", Fueling Speculation That It's A Battle Royale

thegamer.com:

Earlier this week, support studio Certain Affinity announced that it was "deepening" its relationship with 343 Industries. Certain Affinity had already had plenty of experience with the Halo franchise, playing a hand in the creation of the Master Chief Collection and Halo Infinite, and now the independent studio is hiring to further evolve "Halo Infinite in some new and exciting ways."

We might already have a pretty good idea of what direction that evolution will take. Dataminers have found references to a new game mode called "Last Spartan Standing" earlier this month. The description tellingly reads "every Spartan for themselves," and describes leveling up a player’s loadout during a match. On top of that, the Season 2 trailer from last week showed a game mode where Spartans were all shooting each other inside a red dome very reminiscent of Apex Legends.

Related: Halo Infinite Season 2 Is Coming, But Will It Be Enough?

Now we have even more evidence that Halo Infinite is getting a battle royale mode. A Reddit post to the Gaming Leaks and Rumors subreddit credits user yutuyo20 with discovering Certain Affinity’s internal code name for its Halo Infinite project. It’s called “Tatanka,” which also happens to be the name of a WWE wrestler who won a 40-man battle royale match called Bashed in the USA in May 1992.

This is still circumstantial evidence, but it’s all adding up to a battle royale mode coming to Halo Infinite when Season 2 drops next month.

And it can’t come soon enough. Halo Infinite’s player count has been dropping for months now, with just over 10,000 at the beginning of April and now falling to roughly 8,200 players yesterday. That’s fewer than The Master Chief Collection, which had roughly 9,200 concurrent