As if the Peter Jackson partnership wasn't cool enough for Halo fans, there's more to be excited about in the form of the just announced Halo RTS game being developed by Ensemble Studios. "Halo Wars" is a brand new saga in the Halo Universe that explores the time of first contact between the UNSC and Covenant Forces. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to control dozens of Warthogs and Scorpion tanks instead of just a single vehicle, your time has finally come.
Ensemble Studios has a rich heritage and expertise in the real-time-strategy genre through their extremely successful Age of Empires franchises on the PC. This latest endeavor has been designed from the ground up as an Xbox 360 title, with controls and interface specifically tuned for the needs of a console. The folks at Ensemble are the only team we trusted to make a Halo RTS and from what we've already seen (and played), it's going to be awesome. And yes, the controls do work great on a 360 pad.
Bungie has been working with Ensemble primarily in the area of the game's fiction to help inspire the story and ensure continuity with the existing Halo Universe. Aside from that, Ensemble is applying their skills to deliver a great Halo experience in a whole new genre, which is ironically where Halo began in the first place. If you've seen some of the very early Halo videos out there, you might recall that before it ever became an FPS, it was in fact designed as an RTS (building off of Bungie's experience with the Myth franchise). Now, many years later, Ensemble is able to take the franchise full circle and bring it back to the place where it all began.
Ensemble brought their prototype to Bungie quite a while back, to show the guys that an RTS could not only work on the 360, but kick ass too. Frankly, Ensemble is one of very few folks on Earth that we would trust with our baby, and that trust is doubled thanks to the excellence of the Age of Empires franchise.
Ensemble’s own Chris Rippy said, “The Halo Wars team is made up of a bunch of guys that are all very passionate Halo fans. When we sat down to start thinking about our next project, we thought bringing the Halo universe into the RTS world would be a perfect a fit, and would make an amazing game. We couldn't be more excited about Halo Wars, and can't wait for everyone to try it out!”
Naturally you've got a million questions and unfortunately, as is usually the case with anything Halo-related, we don't really have many answers just yet. As we continue to see early builds and get hands on time with the game we'll pass our impressions on to you through our weekly updates but for the most part you should head over to the Ensemble site -
www.halowars.com - for the latest news and updates on Halo Wars. In addition to a FAQ and forum, you'll be able to check out various game assets inclduing the CG announcement trailer that was shown to the press at X06. A web version should be up on their site soon in addition to an HD version hitting Xbox Live Marketplace.
Klik om te vergroten...
