Though 343 Industries recently rebranded itself as Halo Studios (we covered that in depth), there is another studio working on Master Chief.

It all started under 343 Industries. They did Project Tatanka. This was supposed to be a battle royale mode, but the studio eventually shut it down and gave it to Certain Affinity, who renamed it Project Ekur and ported it to Unreal Engine 5. This also coincides with the transition of Halo Studios, as the studio dropped the Slipspace engine (used in Halo Infinite) to allow more Halo projects to be made on Epic Games’ technology.

Project Tatanka was canceled in 2022 by 343 Industries, which was already beginning to explore Unreal Engine 5 as the future of Halo. Around the same time, Certain Affinity decided to rename the project. 343 Industries did not have much insight into Project Ekur. According to the source of the video embedded below, Certain Affinity ported Project Tatanka to Unreal Engine 5, while another source says the project was turned into an extraction shooter.

The Ekur file still exists in the Halo Studios database, which means that this project may still be in active development, and it may be one of the projects the studio was talking about when it was renamed. The situation with Certain Affinity has also changed in the meantime, as Keywords Studios has acquired the Texas team and has several projects in development at the same time. One of them might be Ekur, if the studio hasn’t stopped development.

This is not official yet, but it is possible that this Halo project is still in the works. Either it will be a Battle Royale or it won’t. In any case, Halo Studios is also working on this and that, but we probably won’t hear anything official until the 2025 Xbox Games Showcase (in June).

Source: Reddit