Halo Wars interview: 'What is the essence of Halo?'

By GamePro Staff
March 10, 2009 16:24 PM PST
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GamePro talks Halo Wars with Jason Pace, senior producer at Microsoft Game Studios, about the most powerful units in the game, Halo Wars 2, and upcoming downloadable content.

Halo Wars Coverage Table of Contents
Main Interview Preview (This Page)

NEW: Halo Wars Review

5 Game Genres Perfect for the Halo Series

Why fans of Halo 3 will love Halo Wars

Halo Wars Havoc: The 6 Deadliest Units in the Game

Halo Wars interview: 'What is the essence of Halo?'

What ended up being the most popular power-unit in Halo Wars among the folks at Ensemble?

I think it's a testament to the game's depth, balance and range that if you ask ten different people what their favorite unit is you'll likely get ten different answers. It's fair to say that *everyone* loves the Scarab, however - unless you're on the other side of one.

Do you think that the future of real-time strategy games in general will be found on game consoles?

One of the great things about working in games is that there's room for everyone - PC gaming is thriving, and the mouse and keyboard is uniquely suited to a wide variety of genres. We believe Halo Wars shows that you can have a first class Strategy experience on the console in the same way that Bungie showed with Halo: Combat Evolved that the console could be a showcase platform for first-person shooters.

Would you be interested in working on Halo Wars 2 at some point down the road? Even if you're not involved, do you think a sequel is possible?

As a studio we're very excited about what Halo Wars brings to the franchise and contributes to the Halo universe, so from our perspective the future is wide-open.

What can you tell us about the development of the A.I. in Halo Wars? Did you study other RTS games for inspiration or build the A.I. to the specific needs of the game?

Ensemble developed and refined their A.I. expertise in the Strategy genre for years, so everything they learned while working on the Age series of games is directly relevant to the development of the A.I. in Halo Wars. Units under your command must be able to get to where you deploy them and must be able to appropriately engage the enemy in combat when encountered, and enemy A.I. needs to understand not only how to build, manage, and upgrade an appropriate mix of forces, but also when and how to both attack and counter-attack. Just as importantly, enemy A.I. needs to smartly adjust its tactics based on the level of difficulty chosen.

What do you think fans of the Halo FPS trilogy will embrace the most in a game so different from past games in the series?

This question really gets to the heart of "what is the essence of Halo?" Fans of the FPS series have very strong expectations for how a Halo games looks, feels and plays. Halo is all about heroic action to save the entire human race, epic battles across the galaxy, visceral, highly-tuned combat and heart-pounding tension -- these are core themes for a Halo experience, and we need to make sure they're clearly conveyed to players of Halo Wars.

The most obvious challenge in creating a Halo strategy game is that the camera moves from first person to 3rd person, 40 feet above the action - finding ways to connect players to the battles on the ground as intensely as they feel connected to the FPS games was an ongoing process throughout the development cycle. We did have a few things going for us: instead of taking on the role of a single character you're now controlling an entire army -- so everything is magnified, from the number of different weapons firing simultaneously to the size of potential targets (entire base structures) and magnitude of explosions.

We also needed to precisely replicate how each of the Halo Wars units "feels" - warthogs must control, sound and feel like warthogs, Covenant grunts must move and act like grunts, etc. Bungie was a great resource throughout the development cycle to help make sure we captured the essence of each individual unit, and we discovered that when we nailed how units and characters felt in the game it significantly contributed to the overall sense of being in a Halo experience.

The giant battles, great input from Bungie on how to best represent Halo units and Ensemble's incredible story and innovations to the RTS mechanic and controls - this all gave us confidence that we not only made a Halo game delivering fans a first-class Halo experience, but also a game that sets a new standard for Strategy games on the console.

Aside from the Mythic Map Pack, will Halo Wars fans have any other DLC to look forward to?

We're currently investigating a number of ways to support Halo Wars after release but we don't have anything to announce just yet. Downloadable content is always very high on the list of things we consider, however.