TGS 08: A guided tour of the Halo Wars campaign
Shortly after learning that the Flood would be making an appearance in Halo Wars, we were whisked away to a meeting with Ensemble's Graeme Divine where we immediately asked: "Is the Flood a playable race?" As quickly as we asked it, we were answered: no. With an emphasis on the story-driven single-player campaign, Divine told us that the multiplayer component would only include the UNSC and Covenant forces, as already revealed, and the campaign would only be playable as the UNSC, not the Covenant.
But that brings up another issue: how is the Flood present in a prequel taking place 20 years before the events in Halo: Combat Evolved? The more Halo-aware amongst you (read: total nerds) will recall that the introduction of the mysterious Flood in that seminal title was a surprise to the player and, indeed, to the entire UNSC command. When asked if they're retconning the Flood earlier into the Halo timeline, Divine said that the events observed in Halo 1 "was the first time UNSC knew about the Flood." So how does the existence of the parasitic aliens twenty years earlier go entirely unrecorded? Unsurprisingly, they're not saying (our guess: everyone dies).
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Just because Ensemble Studios – and not Bungie Studios – handled writing duties on the title doesn't mean it's any less canonical. Coordinating with Microsoft's Game Studios Halo team keeps everything canon and also lets Ensemble make adjustments where needed. When designing the military units for the UNSC and Covenant sides, Ensemble discovered that the Covenant had a far more balanced lineup while the UNSC were overwhelmingly dependent on some "Master Chief" one-man army. So they created additional UNSC units like "Cobras" and "Vultures" and created story elements to explain why the vehicles aren't in chronologically subsequent titles (ie: the plants used to build them are destroyed).
The team at Ensemble took another cue from Bungie as well: the look of the game. Sure, the characters and vehicles all look like they're ripped straight from the Bungie playbook but the menu screens also carry that unmistakable Halo touch. We've got four difficulty levels and – whaddya know? – there's Heroic and Legendary modes.
But, looming over the entire project is the recently announced closure of developer Ensemble Studios. When asked if the closure would affect future support of the title, Divine told us that DLC plans are "independent from Ensemble and their future" and that plans for DLC are "already underway" despite the closure. As announced earlier, a new studio is rising from the ashes and has arranged to support Halo Wars and future DLC though, of course, there's no word on the future viability of the Halo Wars series (we imagine that's filed under the "let's see how it sells" category).
We've seen a handful of efforts from EALA (Command & Conquer series) but seeing the veterans at Ensemble's take on the genre is heartening. Whether or not it will find an audience amongst Halo fans, potentially helping the strategy genre "break out on Xbox 360" as John Schappert said, remains to be seen however, by all accounts, Halo Wars is that rare breed: a console RTS that actually works.
