Halo Wars
(Real Time Strategy)(XBOX 360)(Ensemble Studios/Microsoft)( Release: 2008)

How'd They Get Those Ants to Drive Warthogs?

Halo actually started life as a real time strategy game. In time, the design team decided that a first person shooter would fit the console better. But, Trix came full circle and changed back to puffs, so why not Halo (become an RTS, that is. not puffs)? According the official website, the reason for making Halo Wars was "Warthogs are cool. Scorpions are cool. Controlling lots of Warthogs and Scorpions and sending them into battle is really, really cool. We’ve been big fans of Halo for years at Ensemble Studios, and when we sat down to discuss our next project we thought Halo would be absolutely perfect as an RTS on the Xbox 360."

    Bungie is actually not involved in this project. As you may have guessed from the quote above, Halo Wars is being developed by Ensemble studios, makers of the Age of Empires series, so it's obviously in capable hands. However, Ensemble is undertaking a new challenge with Halo Wars : developing for a console. Halo Wars is currently an Xbox 360 exclusive, and no plans are being made to port it to PC. However, given Halo's history, it's not crazy to expect it to find its way to PC's eventually.

    Real time strategy games have historically had control problems on consoles, but Ensemble assures us that they've got it taken care of: "Halo Wars was created for the Xbox 360 from the ground up, which meant we didn't have to make compromises or shoe-horn in artifacts from a Windows PC game. We were able to take all the best aspects of RTS games, make them work perfectly on the Xbox 360, and exclude the rest."

    The story of Halo Wars takes place at the beginning of the war with the covenant, when humanity first made contact with them. Players will take command of the UNSC Spirit of Fire as they journey to all out war with the Covenant. Currently, the Covenant army is not playable, but Ensemble has not completely ruled the possibility out. They have also stayed fairly mum on the subject of multiplayer.

    Halo Wars won't be ready until at least next year, and as such we've barely scratched the surface. Check back with us when Halo Wars becomes a level 2 threat on the Radar.