Halo Infinite looks to be getting a battle royale with Last Spartan Standing, a new game mode set to release during the game’s second season of content launching on May 3.
Details of the new mode were spotted by Twitter account Halo Infinite Leaks & News, which noticed a description of the new Big Team Battle mode now appears in Halo Infinite’s custom games menu after booting it offline.
“Every Spartan for themselves!” the description of Last Spartan Standing reads. “Level up your loadout by earning Personal Score to be the last Spartan standing.”
Gamespot separately corroborated the description, adding each round of the mode will last for 12 minutes. Developer 343 Industries previously described Last Spartan Standing as a “free-for-all elimination mode”, during a Season 2 preview tease back in March.
That certainly sounds like a form of battle royale, in which players are pitted against one another, either individually or in teams, to fight for survival.
This new description makes no mention of a gradually constricting map (a classic battle royale feature) and suggests players will be unlocking and upgrading equipment throughout a match by upping their score, rather than searching for new weapons in hidden caches. But there’s enough of a similarity to draw the inference that this is essentially a battle royale.
Description of the new game mode "Last Spartan Standing".#HaloInfinite pic.twitter.com/5SSq3v10WyApril 6, 2022
We’ve heard rumblings of a Halo Infinite battle royale mode for months. Before the game even launched, dataminers found a voice recording of Halo announcer Jeff Stitzer declaring “battle royale” in the tone with which he usually announces the multiplayer game mode you’re playing.
Windows Central previously reported that a larger battle royale mode, codenamed Tatanka, was in development. That mode is reportedly several months away from rolling out and is described as a “newcomer-friendly” mode targeted to typically non-Halo fans.
Whether Last Spartan Standing turns out to be a fully-fledged battle royale will be incidental to many Halo Infinite fans, however, who are excited for any new content to be added to the game. Fans have expressed their disappointment over the last couple of months with the game’s lack of content updates, prompting even developer 343 Industries to concede that the community is losing patience.
“There are indeed a lot of challenges and constraints,” community director Brian “ske7ch” Jarrard said on Reddit.
“We're certainly not happy to be unable to meet player and community expectations, it's a difficult situation that's going to take the team time to work through. Right now the focus is on S2 and we'll have more to share on that in the coming weeks.”
Last Spartan Standing won’t be the only new content to release in Halo Infinite’s Season 2. A new game mode called Land Grab will also be introduced, as well as fan-favorite King of the Hill. Alongside that, we’ll get another Big Team Battle map called Breaker and an Arena map titled Catalyst.
We can expect more details to be revealed in the coming weeks as Season 2's launch date inches closer.
