Halo Wars
Encyclopedia
Halo Wars is a real-time strategy
(RTS) video game developed by Ensemble Studios
and published by Microsoft Game Studios
for the Xbox 360
video game console
. It was released in Japan and Australia on February 26, 2009, in PAL
territories on February 27, and in North America on March 3. The game is set in the science fiction universe of the Halo series
in the year 2531, 20 years before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved
. The player leads human soldiers aboard the warship Spirit of Fire in an effort to stop an ancient fleet of ships from falling into the hands of the genocidal alien Covenant
.
Halo Wars was officially unveiled at the X06 Xbox show in 2006. Ensemble designed the game specifically for the Xbox 360 controller, in an attempt to circumvent issues present in previous console RTS. Ensemble was closed by Microsoft before the game's release, but Robot Entertainment
was quickly founded by many of Ensemble's former employees; this new company continued to support Halo Wars with updates and downloadable content
.
Halo Wars received generally positive reviews. Reviewers lauded the game's pre-rendered cinematics, attention to detail in replicating the Halo universe, and intuitive control scheme. Complaints against the game included the lack of an option to play as the Covenant faction in campaign mode, or to play as the Flood in any mode, as well as the lack of strategic options during play. Critics from GameSpot
and USA Today
wrote that experienced RTS players would find the strategic elements of the title shallow. The game sold one million units worldwide through March 2009, making it the best-selling console real-time strategy game to date.
Halo Wars is a real-time strategy
(RTS) video game developed exclusively for the Xbox 360
console, in which players command armies from a bird's-eye view
of the battlefield. The game focuses on military combat, but contains streamlined resource management and base construction elements. It was designed with the Xbox 360 Controller
in mind; for example, the A button is used for selecting units. A single tap of the button selects one unit, while a double tap selects all units of the same type. The Left D-pad navigates to current battles and cycles through bases, while the right analog stick
adjusts the camera angle. A radial menu
is used for base construction.
Halo Wars features a story-based, military campaign game mode that can be played alone or cooperatively
over the Xbox Live
service. A plotless multiplayer option, called "skirmish mode", lets players compete against human or computer-controlled opponents. The game features two factions the players can control: the human United Nations Space Command (UNSC) and alien Covenant
. Each faction has different units, strengths, and special abilities. There are three selectable "Leaders" for each side; the chosen leader allows the use of specific units and upgrades during play. While Covenant Leaders appear on the battlefield as units, human leaders do not.
Combat in Halo Wars is balanced
by a "rock-paper-scissors
" system. In general, ground vehicles are effective in combat against infantry, infantry are effective against aircraft, and aircraft are effective against vehicles. Most units have a unique special ability; for example, human Marines throw grenades, while the "Warthog" vehicle can run over enemies. Humans have access to their ship, the Spirit of Fire, and its special abilities, such as a powerful coilgun
called a M.A.C. (Magnetic Accelerator Cannon). Covenant units are generally weaker than their UNSC counterparts, but can use inexpensive and powerful defensive shield generators to add protection to their bases. Players establish their armies by building and expanding bases; these are used to train units and to allocate resources to the research of upgrades and technologies. There are a limited number of potential locations for bases on each scenario or map, making base fortification and defense a priority. A player is defeated if all his or her bases are destroyed, unless a new base is quickly established.
Units are trained, buildings upgraded, and special abilities activated using resources known as "supplies". Players can find supplies on the battlefield, or generate them by building supply structures at bases. Greater numbers of these buildings produce more supplies. Some structures and upgrades become available only after the player achieves a certain "tech level". The UNSC can achieve one to four tech levels through the construction of reactors; the Covenant builds a single temple that allows three upgrades of tech level. The Covenant has one fewer tech level, and each upgrade is more expensive. Destruction of a temple results in the loss of all tech until the temple is rebuilt. Each base has a limited amount of space, so players must balance their resource buildings with other facilities, such as those used to create military units. The number of units a player can deploy is limited, but certain upgrades ease this limit.
al universe of the Halo series, during the 26th century. In 2525, a collective of alien races known as the Covenant
attacked humanity, declaring humans an affront to their gods, the Forerunners. The game takes place in 2531, roughly 20 years before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved
. Six years after the Covenant invaded the colony of Harvest, human UNSC forces are still locked in battle on the planet.
(AI) with a sardonic sense of humor; it has been noted that she demonstrates a level of contempt for the humans she assists. Leading the Covenant search for Forerunner technology is a holy warrior known as the Arbiter
, who the Covenant leaders, the Prophet Hierarchs, have tasked with the oversight of humanity's destruction.
After repelling a Covenant counterattack on the Forerunner facility, the Spirit of Fire travels to Arcadia, where the Covenant has begun raiding local cities and slaughtering civilians. Forge contacts the local Spartan special forces and assists with the evacuation process. The Covenant builds a giant energy shield to hide the construction of a gigantic Scarab super-weapon, but the UNSC forces use experimental equipment to break through. The Scarab is destroyed, but the Arbiter kidnaps Anders and escapes the planet.
Forge and the Spartans return to the Spirit of Fire and the crew follows Anders' signal to an uncharted planet in another star system. The planet's surface is infested by the parasitic Flood, who attack and assimilate any sentient life they encounter. The Spirit of Fire inadvertently activates a Forerunner docking station and enters the planet's interior. Flood board the ship, and very soon Forerunner Sentinels appear to cleanse the Flood threat and also to destroy all UNSC forces in the process. The crew discovers the planet is actually hollow, with a habitable interior and a miniature sun. The Covenant's plan is to activate a dormant fleet of highly advanced Forerunner starships inside the planet, and use them to obliterate humanity.
While the Forerunner ships are being activated, Anders escapes through a teleportation device and is rescued. Cutter decides to destroy the Forerunner fleet rather than allow the Covenant to use it. Anders formulates a plan to detonate the ship's faster-than-light drive in the planet's sun, as the explosion would cause a supernova
. Before they can prepare the reactor, Forge and the Spartans are ambushed by the Arbiter and his Elites. The Spartans dispatch the aliens and Forge kills the Arbiter. The reactor is damaged during the fight, necessitating a manual detonation. Forge volunteers for the suicidal task, telling the Spartans that they will be needed in the coming fight. The Spirit of Fire escapes just as Forge overloads the reactor, destroying the Forerunner fleet. Without its faster-than-light drive, the Spirit of Fire is left drifting in space. The crew enters cryonic sleep
for long-term storage as Cutter takes a last look at Forge's empty cryonic tube. If the game is completed on the "Legendary" difficulty mode, Serina wakes Cutter and tells him that "something has happened".
conceived Halo: Combat Evolved
as a real-time strategy game in which players would tactically control units and vehicles in a three-dimensional environment. Microsoft acquired Bungie in 2000, and the game became a first-person shooter
and "killer app
" for the Xbox
console. Bungie produced two best-selling sequels, Halo 2
in 2004 and Halo 3
in 2007, before separating from Microsoft and becoming an independent company once more. Although Bungie is free to produce new intellectual property, the rights to Halo remain with Microsoft. Shane Kim, the head of Microsoft Game Studios
, said during the split announcement that "our intent is to continue investing in [Halo] and growing it."
In 2004, the Microsoft-owned Ensemble Studios
—developers of the Age of Empires strategy series—began work on the game that would become Halo Wars. The studio confirmed in April 2006 that it was working on a console-based RTS. CEO Tony Goodman said, "We're giving RTS games on the console a shot. We actually spent a whole year just trying to reconstruct how the controls would work on an RTS game." Without revealing the title, Goodman described the game as being shorter and more visceral than their previous projects.
Halo Wars was originally not a Halo series title. Ensemble spent 12 to 18 months working on the control scheme, using the Age of Mythology
engine. The development team hacked an Age of Mythology expansion, The Titans
, and used it as a prototype for control experiments. Ensemble found that managing Age of Mythologys resources, units, and buildings was too difficult with the console's controller. "The answer [to making a PC-style strategy game for a console] is actually hidden in the question," Jason Pace, Microsoft Game Studio's lead producer, told The New Zealand Herald
. "It's something we believe has held strategy games back from succeeding on the console: you can't effectively bring a PC-style strategy game to the console because the fundamental game mechanic is tied to the mouse and keyboard input devices. It's not a question of just changing the control scheme to be gamepad friendly—you need to adapt the underlying strategy mechanic to make sense with the new input device." Senior designer Justin Rouse said that the team kept the controls from the research they had conducted, but scrapped the rest in favor of "build[ing] from the floor up what we need[ed]: the basics, the core of a strategy game." With the goal of making "the first great strategy game on the console", Ensemble streamlined gameplay mechanics; the game's single resource is produced at each base site, which allows players to quickly cycle through their bases instead of micromanaging multiple resources at many locations.
Once the developers were satisfied with the controls, they presented their project to Microsoft, who suggested that it be turned into a Halo game. Although Ensemble had to re-create all of Bungie's assets from scratch, Bungie had produced a large amount of reference material for the Halo film adaptation that the Halo Wars team used for inspiration. Another reference point was art from the Halo first-person shooters; however, as the art was from a forward perspective and Halo Wars takes place from a bird's-eye view
, the team exaggerated shapes to make the units recognizable. Lead designer Graeme Devine
noted that the Warthog Jeep is "actually jumping three times as high as it does in Halo, and it goes four times faster than it does in Halo, and all these things—but it looks the same. Very different, between look and accuracy." To ensure artistic continuity between Halo Wars and previous games in the series, Ensemble created a set of guidelines for their artists to follow; for example, the Covenant were to retain their curvy, organic look, while the Forerunner and UNSC were to keep the same geometry angles. UNSC structures and units were given a green tint, with gold specular highlights. The Covenant were textured with a repeating honeycomb pattern, with small blue lights against a purple base color.
Devine described the challenge of developing Halo Wars as "getting Halo fans to play a realtime strategy game, and getting realtime strategy fans to play a Halo game." "Fans of the [first-person shooter] series have very strong expectations for how a Halo games looks, feels and plays. Halo is all about heroic action to save humanity, mega-battles across the galaxy, visceral, highly-tuned combat and heart-pounding tension," Pace said. These themes were considered fundamental to the Halo experience, and so Ensemble tried to replicate them for Halo Wars. Early in play tests, the developers watched devoted Halo fans play the game; their feedback led to the development of special abilities, which, according to Devine, enhanced the Halo feel. Ensemble initially considered making the Flood a playable race, but this idea did not progress beyond the concept stage. According to Devine, this was largely because the Flood would have needed to be similar to StarCraft
s Zerg, in order to maintain balance with the UNSC and Covenant. This did not match the Flood's role as "the single scariest thing in the galaxy".
Because of the Master Chief
's large role in previous games, significant effort was expended on the Spartan units. Lead programmer Dave Pottinger
said the design team "started out just accepting and embracing the fact that the Spartans have to be the coolest unit in the game. If they're not, it's not going to meet the Halo fans' expectations." To position the Spartans as "kingmaker
s" in gameplay, the team gave them what it considered to be the "coolest" unit ability: hijacking enemy vehicles. The developers hoped players would become attached to individual Spartans in the campaign and gave each one an individual name; skirmish units were left nameless. The character design of the Spartans was meant to emphasize their relative inexperience and the setting of the game, which takes place decades before the events of the main trilogy. Devine commented on the Spartans' look:
Ensemble expanded the Halo universe during the game's development, in order to create enough units to give players strategic options. Among the new units was the Gorgon, a biped mech
that used weapons called Needlers to destroy light aircraft. However, Ensemble later realized that the Gorgon invalidated a rule they had established: "anything with two legs that walks" was an infantry unit. Instead, the team added a new aircraft called the Vampire. The UNSC, meanwhile, lacked a melee unit to match the Covenant's hand-to-hand power. Ensemble considered using the original, less advanced Spartan Mark I suits of armor, in keeping with Halo lore, but once added these units were indistinguishable from Spartans in appearance. Instead, they created a lumbering, mechanized unit called the Cyclops, a nod to Age of Mythology.
Time constraints prevented many elements from appearing in the final game. One such missing feature was a fatality system by which Spartans or Covenant leaders could inflict massive damage on large groups of units. Pottinger said that the animations, while interesting, did not mesh with the fast-paced combat of Halo Wars and raised balance concerns. Other elements based on Halo fiction did not work in a strategy game. Although more than 100 people worked on the project, which cost tens of millions of dollars, a Covenant campaign was never realized because of a lack of manpower and money.
Halo Wars was officially announced at Microsoft's X06 media briefing on September 27, 2006, with a pre-rendered trailer created by Blur Studio. The trailer depicts a group of Warthog vehicles searching for missing soldiers. Covenant Elites ambush the patrol and a battle ensues involving human and Covenant vehicles and infantry. The trailer ends with the arrival of Spartan reinforcements. GameSpy
listed the trailer in its top 25 video game cinematic moments, because it showed "the world of Halo on a much grander scale".
Halo Wars was exhibited at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in 2007 and 2008. Devine narrated the soundtrack for a video shown at E3 2007, which was later made available on the Xbox Live Marketplace
. This video described the game's controls, user interface, vehicles, special weapons, and new units. It also showed a UNSC base consisting of an airbase, vehicle depot, missile silo, and other buildings. IGN
, Next Generation Magazine
, and PC World
ranked Halo Wars as one of the most anticipated showings at E3.
On September 10, 2008, Ensemble Studios announced that it would close after Halo Wars completion. Ensemble founder Tony Goodman and other employees announced the formation of a new studio, Robot Entertainment
, shortly before the game's release; another group of ex-staff created Bonfire Studios
. Robot announced that, while developing new intellectual property, it would support Halo Wars and Age of Empires through a partnership with Microsoft Game Studios.
, the composer for all of the Age of Empires games. Rippy wanted to write new material while maintaining continuity by reusing iconic elements of the Halo trilogy's music, written by Martin O'Donnell
and partner Michael Salvatori
. Consultation with O'Donnell and Salvatori finished before Rippy became involved in the project, but the composer sent a compact disc of his work to O'Donnell halfway through the writing process. Before starting work on Halo Wars, Rippy listened to previous Halo soundtracks and searched for useful material in discarded Ensemble projects; "I'm a big fan of both cataloging that stuff and stealing from it without remorse," Rippy said. "Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until you really, really need it." Rippy and audio lead Kevin McMullan examined O'Donnell's tracks to identify elements to reuse in Halo Wars. Foregoing his usual method of writing melodies before determining the method of sound production, Rippy built melodies around synthesizer patches or drum loops. He felt that scoring for science fiction was a change of pace from his previous work, which was written for historical settings.
Rippy began writing music for the game in April 2007. "Some of the plot points of Halo Wars revolve around discovery, and I think that was my favorite idea to write to—that sense of, 'no one's seen this before,'" he said. The first two tracks combined repurposed elements from past projects with his efforts to convey the Halo sound. "Flollo" contained musical ideas Rippy had experimented with since his last project, Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs. "Bad Here Day" was the first piece in which he tried to incorporate the "Halo sound". Rippy felt it important to avoid repeating too many old themes because he wanted the game to have its own identity; however, he wanted to continue to incorporate choir and piano, elements he believed to be integral to the sound of previous Halo games. In adherence to an Ensemble Studios tradition, the tracks are often named after coined phrases and inside jokes, rather than in-game events.
By the end of 2007, Rippy had completed all of the gameplay music, including end credits, battle themes, and ambient world tracks. In the game's skirmish mode, the music reflects the environment rather than the warring factions. To ensure that the character of the music changed depending on the environment, he followed self-imposed rules; one environment could feature guitars, but not piano, for instance. To musically unify each world, he added a short introductory piece containing common elements. In contrast with the skirmish mode, the campaign mode contains different recurring melodies for each major character and the human ship Spirit of Fire. Rippy's most intensive work period was January 2008, when he began writing music for the game's cinematics; by this point, he had been working on the score for nine months. Rippy finished the score by February 2008, and, after three months, all tracks were ready to be recorded.
Although the previous live orchestrations for Halo games were performed by the Northwest Sinfonia in Seattle, Washington
, Rippy chose the FILMharmonic Orchestra of Prague
to record Halo Wars music. Rippy had been in Prague attending recording sessions for Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties
and loved both the city and the sound the orchestra produced. The lower cost of recording in Eastern Europe was an additional benefit. The March 10–15 recording sessions involved 24 vocalists and 45 instrumentalists; choir and string sections were later overdubbed
to enlarge the sound. In all, roughly 65 minutes of Halo Wars 75-minute score were recorded in Prague. The final touches and production took place in Seattle; O'Donnell attended one of the mixing sessions.
Rippy used the Audiokinetic Wwise
pipeline to create dynamic music
that changes with the action in the game. Although Rippy used Wwise's tools only for dynamic music, they made audio system setup much easier than in previous Ensemble games. For each battle sequence, the musical cue was divided into sections and mixed differently for each section. "When a cue is triggered, an intro plays and then the game randomly picks between all of those elements for as long as the battle continues," Rippy explained. "Once it's over, an outro plays and then it's back to the regular "world" music. It was an interesting way to work, and I'd like to push it further if there’s an opportunity in the future."
Four tracks from Halo Wars were included as a preview on a bonus DVD bundled with Halo Trilogy—The Complete Original Soundtracks, a December 2008 compilation of previous Halo music. The tracks were mixed in Dolby Digital
5.1-channel Surround Sound
and packaged with video of recording sessions and the "Five Long Years" trailer. The soundtrack was released on February 17 as a standalone compact disc and as a digital download
. AOL Radio
secured the exclusive rights to premiere the soundtrack early, playing a new track at the beginning of every hour.
, and it became available for download on February 5, 2009; redemption codes for early access were given starting January 29. According to Microsoft, the game was downloaded by more than 2 million Xbox Live
Gold members in the first five days, and set a record for most demo downloads on the service.
In addition to the standard retail version, a Limited Collector's Edition of Halo Wars was made available. To attract Halo 3s player base, Microsoft bundled early access to the Mythic Map Pack, a collection of three Halo 3 multiplayer maps, with the collector's edition. A 48-page, half-size hardcover graphic novel
was also included; titled Halo Wars: Genesis, it was created by Phil Noto, Graeme Devine, and Eric Nylund. It explores the background stories of Anders, the Arbiter, Forge and Cutter. Other bonuses included a unique in-game vehicle, trading cards, and a Spirit of Fire patch. Players who pre-ordered the game from certain retailers received a special in-game Warthog vehicle with flame decals. GameStop
announced that on February 28, 2009, one thousand stores in the United States would hold Halo Wars tournaments, and two thousand GameStop stores held midnight releases for the game. European markets sold a "Best of Halo" bundle of Halo Wars, Halo 3 and an Xbox 360.
On release, Halo Wars reached second place on the United Kingdom weekly sales charts behind Killzone 2. Halo Wars reached only 16.7% of Halo 3s first-week sales, but it outsold Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
threefold, making it the fastest-selling console strategy game. The following week, Halo Warss sales were ranked fifth. In Australia, Halo Wars weekly sales ranked highest, ahead of Killzone 2. By March 12, the limited edition and standard version were ranked second and third, respectively, on the United States Xbox 360 sales charts, behind Call of Duty: World at War
. Gamasutra
attributed the surge in Halo 3 sales to the release of Halo Wars; the former was fourth in the United States and second in Australia in sales of Xbox 360 games, and reappeared on the list of top 20 United States console games for February.
Before the game's release, industry analyst Michael Pachter estimated that Halo Wars would sell 2 million units. On March 19, 2009, Microsoft announced that the game had sold 1 million units and that players had spent 118 total years of time in online skirmish matches. According to NPD Group
's March sales figures, Halo Wars sold 639,000 copies in North America through March, making it the third best-selling game in the market.
(DLC) for Halo Wars. Pottinger described support as ongoing rather than a one-time effort and compared it to Bungie's post-launch additions to Halo 3. He stated that Robot would also work on balance issues, bug fixes, and other patches.
The first DLC package, Strategic Options, added three new multiplayer modes. "Keepaway" is similar to capture the flag
; in it, players try to capture and hold Forerunner units. In "Tug-of-war", players earn points by fielding large armies and destroying enemy units. In "Reinforcement", players receive units as reinforcements, rather than training them at bases. The amount of available resources and reactors determines which types of units are deployed and the upgrades they can earn. Strategic Options was released on May 19, 2009, after a patch
that addressed software bug
s and game balance
issues. The update garnered criticism for its small size (2 megabytes) and high price (800 Microsoft points
). Pottinger responded on the Halo Wars forums that the game modes were small downloads "because they are rules. There is some new content, but it's obviously a different type of content compared to a map." Robot released a second DLC package on July 21, 2009. The DLC, dubbed "Historic Battles", contains four additional maps and four new Xbox Live achievements.
and Metacritic
. Critics were split on whether Halo Wars was a successful console translation of the RTS genre. GameSpy
's Allen Rausch argued that, as Halo: Combat Evolved
showed that first-person shooters could work on consoles, Halo Wars "is an RTS ... on a console ... and it works". Tom Price of TeamXbox
said that gamers have been waiting a long time for a console RTS "to get it right", and Halo Wars did so; reviewers for Official Xbox Magazine
credited Ensemble with creating a strategy game that felt "absolutely at home on the console", rather than a "poorly shoehorned ... port" of a PC game with clumsy controls. 1UP
's Thierry Nguyen was neutral about whether it was a good RTS game or Halo title, but called it a "solid beginning towards what could be a really good console RTS". Digital Trends
' Scott Steinberg said that, while not perfect, Halo Wars made a strong case for the viability of RTS on consoles; "There's certainly the potential to have PC holdouts seriously reconsidering hoisting the controller." Peter Hartlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle
offered a dismissive summation of the game as "a remedial game—real-time strategy for dummies", and stated that the game offered relatively little innovation when compared to other Halo titles.
Reviewers generally praised Halo Warss controls. Critics who were less experienced RTS players, such as Darren Zenko of the Toronto Star
, appreciated the streamlined RTS experience. In contrast, critics such as Luke Anderson of GameSpot
said that the game lacked the depth necessary to attract more seasoned RTS players. Some critics were frustrated by the lack of control features—specifically, the ability to create and manage groups of units, the lack of hotkeys, the inability to set rally points for different units, and the need to return to the base to adjust production. Nguyen wrote that "finesse maneuvers [...] are more difficult to pull off than they should be". Brett Molina of USA Today
said that experts would find the action oversimplified, but that the game "is an excellent choice for fans of the Halo universe and players new to real-time strategy". Reviewers for GameSpy, G4tv, and Eurogamer stated that the controls worked well mainly because the developers omitted features to make most options quickly available; for example, limiting base construction to select areas made sure players could easily find their buildings.
Reviewers considered the factions balanced. Eurogamer
's Kieron Gillen
commented that the Covenant was harder to master, especially because the campaign served as a tutorial for the UNSC, but no similar introduction was available for the Covenant. However, he said the two sides were "authentically different", and each offered its own challenges to players. Some critics, such as Nick Cowen of The Daily Telegraph
, wished that the Flood was a playable faction; in contrast, Ryan Geddes of IGN
disliked the Flood and appreciated their exclusion. Will Porter of IGN UK enjoyed the rock-paper-scissors RTS mechanics, but said that "since the game is singularly crap at indicating which units are rocks and which scissors," players had to learn which units were best via trial and error, an issue that was more prevalent with the Covenant.
The game's plot was well-received. Reviewers praised the game's cinematics and voice acting. Geddes said the story was good, but not on par with those of Bungie's Halo games, and that most of the characters were stereotypical and somewhat unlikable. Critics noted that for a strategy game, the campaign was rather short, with only 15 missions; Nate Ralph of Wired
completed each in fewer than 40 minutes. Jon Wilcox of Total Video Games wrote "there's an ebb and flow" to the gameplay, with "lengthy chapters cut with shorter punchy ones or time-based missions, all together creating a surprisingly compelling experience". Wilcox said the additions of performance-based medals added replay value
to the campaign. Price said that, although the story and mission structure of the game was fairly standard, levels that were "rote" in other RTS games seemed more substantial in Halo Wars. Reviewers such as Geddes, Wilcox, and Patrick Kolan of IGN UK said that the lack of a Covenant campaign was an unfortunate omission.
Publications judged the multiplayer aspect of the game well. Wilcox noted that, although the multiplayer mode "added [nothing] new [to RTS games], at the very least it's a solid experience that expands the longevity of Halo Wars." Adam Biessener of Game Informer
wrote that Halo Wars gameplay was better against human players, as campaign "gimmicks" and poor artificial intelligence were not an issue. The Mirrors Kevin Lynch found fault with the "limited" variety of game modes.
Critics generally agreed that Ensemble re-created the Halo universe's aesthetic well. Gillen said knowledge of the game universe could alleviate some issues of player ignorance regarding units' actions: "It's not just the geek thrill of seeing a Scarab in action—it's that you understand what the Scarab means on the battlefield (trouble)," he wrote. "We know which characters are best against tanks, and which are probably best in special vehicles." Nguyen said that, although the core units meshed well, the inclusion of Ensemble-developed units gave Halo Wars the feeling of a generic science-fiction title. While giving the game a mixed review, Anderson said that the authentic-looking units and environments went a long way to integrating the game with the rest of the series. Wilcox commented that with the Halo-inspired menu system and Rippy's score, "before the campaign even begins, the message is clear: this is still very much a Halo game." Overall, Halo Wars was judged a fitting final game for Ensemble.
Real-time strategy
Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....
(RTS) video game developed by Ensemble Studios
Ensemble Studios
Ensemble Studios was a video game developer initially established in 1995 as an independent company, but was owned by Microsoft from 2001 to 2009, when it was officially disbanded. Ensemble developed many real-time strategy games, including the Age of Empires game series, Age of Mythology, and Halo...
and published by Microsoft Game Studios
Microsoft Game Studios
Microsoft Studios is the video game production wing for Microsoft, responsible for the development and publishing of games for the Xbox, Xbox 360, Games for Windows and Windows Phone platforms. They were established in 2002 as Microsoft Game Studios to coincide with the release of the Xbox, before...
for the Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
video game console
Video game console
A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer or customized computer system that produces a video display signal which can be used with a display device to display a video game...
. It was released in Japan and Australia on February 26, 2009, in PAL
PAL region
The PAL region is a television publication territory which covers most of Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and most of Western Europe...
territories on February 27, and in North America on March 3. The game is set in the science fiction universe of the Halo series
Halo (series)
Halo is a multi-million dollar science fiction video game franchise created by Bungie and now managed by 343 Industries and owned by Microsoft Studios. The series centers on an interstellar war between humanity and a theocratic alliance of aliens known as the Covenant...
in the year 2531, 20 years before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved
Halo: Combat Evolved
Halo: Combat Evolved, frequently referred to as Halo: CE, or Halo 1, is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The first game of the Halo franchise, it was released on November 15, 2001 as a launch title for the Xbox gaming system, and is...
. The player leads human soldiers aboard the warship Spirit of Fire in an effort to stop an ancient fleet of ships from falling into the hands of the genocidal alien Covenant
Covenant (Halo)
The Covenant are a fictional theocratic military alliance of alien races who serve as the main antagonists in the Halo video game series. They are composed of a variety of diverse species, united under the religious worship of the enigmatic Forerunners and their belief that Forerunner ringworlds...
.
Halo Wars was officially unveiled at the X06 Xbox show in 2006. Ensemble designed the game specifically for the Xbox 360 controller, in an attempt to circumvent issues present in previous console RTS. Ensemble was closed by Microsoft before the game's release, but Robot Entertainment
Robot Entertainment
Robot Entertainment is a video game publishing company created by the founders of the defunct Ensemble Studios, after being shut down by Microsoft. Other members of the company founded Bonfire Studios. Robot Entertainment was responsible for maintaining and updating Halo Wars until February 28,...
was quickly founded by many of Ensemble's former employees; this new company continued to support Halo Wars with updates and downloadable content
Downloadable content
Downloadable content is official additional content for a video game distributed through the Internet. Downloadable content can be of several types, ranging from a single in-game outfit to an entirely new, extensive storyline, similarly to an expansion pack. As such, DLC may add new game modes,...
.
Halo Wars received generally positive reviews. Reviewers lauded the game's pre-rendered cinematics, attention to detail in replicating the Halo universe, and intuitive control scheme. Complaints against the game included the lack of an option to play as the Covenant faction in campaign mode, or to play as the Flood in any mode, as well as the lack of strategic options during play. Critics from GameSpot
GameSpot
GameSpot is a video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information. The site was launched in May 1, 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. It was purchased by ZDNet, a brand which was later purchased by CNET Networks. CBS Interactive, which...
and USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
wrote that experienced RTS players would find the strategic elements of the title shallow. The game sold one million units worldwide through March 2009, making it the best-selling console real-time strategy game to date.
Gameplay
Real-time strategy
Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....
(RTS) video game developed exclusively for the Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
console, in which players command armies from a bird's-eye view
Bird's-eye view
A bird's-eye view is an elevated view of an object from above, with a perspective as though the observer were a bird, often used in the making of blueprints, floor plans and maps.It can be an aerial photograph, but also a drawing...
of the battlefield. The game focuses on military combat, but contains streamlined resource management and base construction elements. It was designed with the Xbox 360 Controller
Xbox 360 Controller
The Xbox 360 Controller is the primary controller for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console and was introduced at E3 2005. The Xbox 360 controller comes in both wired and wireless versions. Original Xbox controllers are not compatible with the Xbox 360...
in mind; for example, the A button is used for selecting units. A single tap of the button selects one unit, while a double tap selects all units of the same type. The Left D-pad navigates to current battles and cycles through bases, while the right analog stick
Analog stick
An analog stick, sometimes called a control stick or thumbstick, is an input device for a controller that is used for two-dimensional input. An analog stick is a variation of a joystick, consisting of a protrusion from the controller; input is based on the position of this protrusion in relation...
adjusts the camera angle. A radial menu
Menu (computing)
In computing and telecommunications, a menu is a list of commands presented to an operator by a computer or communications system. A menu is used in contrast to a command-line interface, where instructions to the computer are given in the form of commands .Choices given from a menu may be selected...
is used for base construction.
Halo Wars features a story-based, military campaign game mode that can be played alone or cooperatively
Cooperative gameplay
Cooperative gameplay is a feature in video games that allows players to work together as teammates. It is distinct from other multiplayer modes, such as competitive multiplayer modes like player versus player or deathmatch...
over the Xbox Live
Xbox Live
Xbox Live is an online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service created and operated by Microsoft Corporation. It is currently the only online gaming service on consoles that charges users a fee to play multiplayer gaming. It was first made available to the Xbox system in 2002...
service. A plotless multiplayer option, called "skirmish mode", lets players compete against human or computer-controlled opponents. The game features two factions the players can control: the human United Nations Space Command (UNSC) and alien Covenant
Covenant (Halo)
The Covenant are a fictional theocratic military alliance of alien races who serve as the main antagonists in the Halo video game series. They are composed of a variety of diverse species, united under the religious worship of the enigmatic Forerunners and their belief that Forerunner ringworlds...
. Each faction has different units, strengths, and special abilities. There are three selectable "Leaders" for each side; the chosen leader allows the use of specific units and upgrades during play. While Covenant Leaders appear on the battlefield as units, human leaders do not.
Combat in Halo Wars is balanced
Game balance
Game balance is a concept in game design describing fairness or balance of power in a game between multiple players or strategic options. Each team or person would be equally matched in every aspect.- Overview :...
by a "rock-paper-scissors
Rock-paper-scissors
Rock-paper-scissors is a hand game played by two people. The game is also known as roshambo, or another ordering of the three items ....
" system. In general, ground vehicles are effective in combat against infantry, infantry are effective against aircraft, and aircraft are effective against vehicles. Most units have a unique special ability; for example, human Marines throw grenades, while the "Warthog" vehicle can run over enemies. Humans have access to their ship, the Spirit of Fire, and its special abilities, such as a powerful coilgun
Coilgun
A coilgun is a type of projectile accelerator that consists of one or more coils used as electromagnets in the configuration of a synchronous linear motor which accelerate a magnetic projectile to high velocity...
called a M.A.C. (Magnetic Accelerator Cannon). Covenant units are generally weaker than their UNSC counterparts, but can use inexpensive and powerful defensive shield generators to add protection to their bases. Players establish their armies by building and expanding bases; these are used to train units and to allocate resources to the research of upgrades and technologies. There are a limited number of potential locations for bases on each scenario or map, making base fortification and defense a priority. A player is defeated if all his or her bases are destroyed, unless a new base is quickly established.
Units are trained, buildings upgraded, and special abilities activated using resources known as "supplies". Players can find supplies on the battlefield, or generate them by building supply structures at bases. Greater numbers of these buildings produce more supplies. Some structures and upgrades become available only after the player achieves a certain "tech level". The UNSC can achieve one to four tech levels through the construction of reactors; the Covenant builds a single temple that allows three upgrades of tech level. The Covenant has one fewer tech level, and each upgrade is more expensive. Destruction of a temple results in the loss of all tech until the temple is rebuilt. Each base has a limited amount of space, so players must balance their resource buildings with other facilities, such as those used to create military units. The number of units a player can deploy is limited, but certain upgrades ease this limit.
Setting
Halo Wars takes place in the science fictionScience fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
al universe of the Halo series, during the 26th century. In 2525, a collective of alien races known as the Covenant
Covenant (Halo)
The Covenant are a fictional theocratic military alliance of alien races who serve as the main antagonists in the Halo video game series. They are composed of a variety of diverse species, united under the religious worship of the enigmatic Forerunners and their belief that Forerunner ringworlds...
attacked humanity, declaring humans an affront to their gods, the Forerunners. The game takes place in 2531, roughly 20 years before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved
Halo: Combat Evolved
Halo: Combat Evolved, frequently referred to as Halo: CE, or Halo 1, is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The first game of the Halo franchise, it was released on November 15, 2001 as a launch title for the Xbox gaming system, and is...
. Six years after the Covenant invaded the colony of Harvest, human UNSC forces are still locked in battle on the planet.
Characters
The commander of the UNSC warship Spirit of Fire is Captain James Cutter, a strong leader who has earned the admiration of his subordinates. Cutter's lack of political ambition prevents him from climbing the ranks further. Serving under Cutter is Sergeant John Forge, a gruff Marine whose devotion to his men has caused him to be jailed twice for disobeying orders and engaging in disorderly conduct. Joining the Spirit of Fires military expedition is Professor Ellen Anders, a scientist interested in ancient ruins of the mysterious Forerunners. The Spirit of Fire is operated with help from Serina, a super-intelligent artificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
(AI) with a sardonic sense of humor; it has been noted that she demonstrates a level of contempt for the humans she assists. Leading the Covenant search for Forerunner technology is a holy warrior known as the Arbiter
Arbiter (Halo)
Arbiter is a fictional ceremonial, religious, and political rank bestowed upon alien Covenant Elites in the Halo science fiction universe. In the 2004 video game Halo 2, the rank is given to a disgraced commander as a way to atone for his failures...
, who the Covenant leaders, the Prophet Hierarchs, have tasked with the oversight of humanity's destruction.
Story
The Spirit of Fire is sent to the ruined planet Harvest to investigate Covenant activity, where Cutter learns that the Covenant has excavated something at the planet's northern pole. When the UNSC's main outpost on Harvest is captured, Cutter orders Forge to retake it. Soon after, Forge scouts the Covenant excavation and discovers that they, under the direction of the Arbiter, have discovered a Forerunner facility. Forge's troops defeat the Covenant forces before they can destroy the installation, and Anders arrives. She determines that the facility is an interstellar map, and recognizes a set of coordinates that points to the human colony of Arcadia.After repelling a Covenant counterattack on the Forerunner facility, the Spirit of Fire travels to Arcadia, where the Covenant has begun raiding local cities and slaughtering civilians. Forge contacts the local Spartan special forces and assists with the evacuation process. The Covenant builds a giant energy shield to hide the construction of a gigantic Scarab super-weapon, but the UNSC forces use experimental equipment to break through. The Scarab is destroyed, but the Arbiter kidnaps Anders and escapes the planet.
Forge and the Spartans return to the Spirit of Fire and the crew follows Anders' signal to an uncharted planet in another star system. The planet's surface is infested by the parasitic Flood, who attack and assimilate any sentient life they encounter. The Spirit of Fire inadvertently activates a Forerunner docking station and enters the planet's interior. Flood board the ship, and very soon Forerunner Sentinels appear to cleanse the Flood threat and also to destroy all UNSC forces in the process. The crew discovers the planet is actually hollow, with a habitable interior and a miniature sun. The Covenant's plan is to activate a dormant fleet of highly advanced Forerunner starships inside the planet, and use them to obliterate humanity.
While the Forerunner ships are being activated, Anders escapes through a teleportation device and is rescued. Cutter decides to destroy the Forerunner fleet rather than allow the Covenant to use it. Anders formulates a plan to detonate the ship's faster-than-light drive in the planet's sun, as the explosion would cause a supernova
Supernova
A supernova is a stellar explosion that is more energetic than a nova. It is pronounced with the plural supernovae or supernovas. Supernovae are extremely luminous and cause a burst of radiation that often briefly outshines an entire galaxy, before fading from view over several weeks or months...
. Before they can prepare the reactor, Forge and the Spartans are ambushed by the Arbiter and his Elites. The Spartans dispatch the aliens and Forge kills the Arbiter. The reactor is damaged during the fight, necessitating a manual detonation. Forge volunteers for the suicidal task, telling the Spartans that they will be needed in the coming fight. The Spirit of Fire escapes just as Forge overloads the reactor, destroying the Forerunner fleet. Without its faster-than-light drive, the Spirit of Fire is left drifting in space. The crew enters cryonic sleep
Cryonics
Cryonics is the low-temperature preservation of humans and animals who can no longer be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future. Cryopreservation of people or large animals is not reversible with current technology...
for long-term storage as Cutter takes a last look at Forge's empty cryonic tube. If the game is completed on the "Legendary" difficulty mode, Serina wakes Cutter and tells him that "something has happened".
Design
Computer game developer Bungie StudiosBungie
Bungie, Inc is an American video game developer currently located in Bellevue, Washington, USA. The company was established in May 1991 by University of Chicago undergraduate student Alex Seropian, who later brought in programmer Jason Jones after publishing Jones' game Minotaur: The Labyrinths of...
conceived Halo: Combat Evolved
Halo: Combat Evolved
Halo: Combat Evolved, frequently referred to as Halo: CE, or Halo 1, is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The first game of the Halo franchise, it was released on November 15, 2001 as a launch title for the Xbox gaming system, and is...
as a real-time strategy game in which players would tactically control units and vehicles in a three-dimensional environment. Microsoft acquired Bungie in 2000, and the game became a first-person shooter
First-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
and "killer app
Killer application
A killer application , in the jargon of marketing teams, has been used to refer to any computer program that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as computer hardware, gaming console, software, or an operating system...
" for the Xbox
Xbox
The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console...
console. Bungie produced two best-selling sequels, Halo 2
Halo 2
Halo 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie Studios. Released for the Xbox video game console on November 9, 2004, the game is the second installment in the Halo franchise and the sequel to 2001's critically acclaimed Halo: Combat Evolved...
in 2004 and Halo 3
Halo 3
Halo 3 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie for the Xbox 360 console. The third installment in the Halo franchise, the game concludes the story arc begun in Halo: Combat Evolved and continued in Halo 2...
in 2007, before separating from Microsoft and becoming an independent company once more. Although Bungie is free to produce new intellectual property, the rights to Halo remain with Microsoft. Shane Kim, the head of Microsoft Game Studios
Microsoft Game Studios
Microsoft Studios is the video game production wing for Microsoft, responsible for the development and publishing of games for the Xbox, Xbox 360, Games for Windows and Windows Phone platforms. They were established in 2002 as Microsoft Game Studios to coincide with the release of the Xbox, before...
, said during the split announcement that "our intent is to continue investing in [Halo] and growing it."
In 2004, the Microsoft-owned Ensemble Studios
Ensemble Studios
Ensemble Studios was a video game developer initially established in 1995 as an independent company, but was owned by Microsoft from 2001 to 2009, when it was officially disbanded. Ensemble developed many real-time strategy games, including the Age of Empires game series, Age of Mythology, and Halo...
—developers of the Age of Empires strategy series—began work on the game that would become Halo Wars. The studio confirmed in April 2006 that it was working on a console-based RTS. CEO Tony Goodman said, "We're giving RTS games on the console a shot. We actually spent a whole year just trying to reconstruct how the controls would work on an RTS game." Without revealing the title, Goodman described the game as being shorter and more visceral than their previous projects.
Halo Wars was originally not a Halo series title. Ensemble spent 12 to 18 months working on the control scheme, using the Age of Mythology
Age of Mythology
Age of Mythology , is a mythology-based, real-time strategy computer game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios...
engine. The development team hacked an Age of Mythology expansion, The Titans
Age of Mythology: The Titans
Age of Mythology: The Titans is a real-time strategy computer game expansion pack of Age of Mythology. It was developed by Ensemble Studios and released on October 21, 2003....
, and used it as a prototype for control experiments. Ensemble found that managing Age of Mythologys resources, units, and buildings was too difficult with the console's controller. "The answer [to making a PC-style strategy game for a console] is actually hidden in the question," Jason Pace, Microsoft Game Studio's lead producer, told The New Zealand Herald
The New Zealand Herald
- External links :* * *...
. "It's something we believe has held strategy games back from succeeding on the console: you can't effectively bring a PC-style strategy game to the console because the fundamental game mechanic is tied to the mouse and keyboard input devices. It's not a question of just changing the control scheme to be gamepad friendly—you need to adapt the underlying strategy mechanic to make sense with the new input device." Senior designer Justin Rouse said that the team kept the controls from the research they had conducted, but scrapped the rest in favor of "build[ing] from the floor up what we need[ed]: the basics, the core of a strategy game." With the goal of making "the first great strategy game on the console", Ensemble streamlined gameplay mechanics; the game's single resource is produced at each base site, which allows players to quickly cycle through their bases instead of micromanaging multiple resources at many locations.
Once the developers were satisfied with the controls, they presented their project to Microsoft, who suggested that it be turned into a Halo game. Although Ensemble had to re-create all of Bungie's assets from scratch, Bungie had produced a large amount of reference material for the Halo film adaptation that the Halo Wars team used for inspiration. Another reference point was art from the Halo first-person shooters; however, as the art was from a forward perspective and Halo Wars takes place from a bird's-eye view
Bird's-eye view
A bird's-eye view is an elevated view of an object from above, with a perspective as though the observer were a bird, often used in the making of blueprints, floor plans and maps.It can be an aerial photograph, but also a drawing...
, the team exaggerated shapes to make the units recognizable. Lead designer Graeme Devine
Graeme Devine
Graeme Devine is a computer game designer and programmer who co-founded Trilobyte, created bestselling games The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, and designed id Software's Quake III Arena. He was also Chairman of the International Game Developers Association from 2002-2003...
noted that the Warthog Jeep is "actually jumping three times as high as it does in Halo, and it goes four times faster than it does in Halo, and all these things—but it looks the same. Very different, between look and accuracy." To ensure artistic continuity between Halo Wars and previous games in the series, Ensemble created a set of guidelines for their artists to follow; for example, the Covenant were to retain their curvy, organic look, while the Forerunner and UNSC were to keep the same geometry angles. UNSC structures and units were given a green tint, with gold specular highlights. The Covenant were textured with a repeating honeycomb pattern, with small blue lights against a purple base color.
Devine described the challenge of developing Halo Wars as "getting Halo fans to play a realtime strategy game, and getting realtime strategy fans to play a Halo game." "Fans of the [first-person shooter] series have very strong expectations for how a Halo games looks, feels and plays. Halo is all about heroic action to save humanity, mega-battles across the galaxy, visceral, highly-tuned combat and heart-pounding tension," Pace said. These themes were considered fundamental to the Halo experience, and so Ensemble tried to replicate them for Halo Wars. Early in play tests, the developers watched devoted Halo fans play the game; their feedback led to the development of special abilities, which, according to Devine, enhanced the Halo feel. Ensemble initially considered making the Flood a playable race, but this idea did not progress beyond the concept stage. According to Devine, this was largely because the Flood would have needed to be similar to StarCraft
StarCraft
StarCraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The first game of the StarCraft series was released for Microsoft Windows on 31 March 1998. With more than 11 million copies sold worldwide as of February 2009, it is one of the best-selling...
s Zerg, in order to maintain balance with the UNSC and Covenant. This did not match the Flood's role as "the single scariest thing in the galaxy".
Because of the Master Chief
Master Chief (Halo)
Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 is a fictional character and protagonist of the Halo fictional universe, created by Bungie. Master Chief is a player character in the trilogy of science fiction first-person shooter video games Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3 and will appear in the...
's large role in previous games, significant effort was expended on the Spartan units. Lead programmer Dave Pottinger
Dave Pottinger
Dave Pottinger is Lead Programmer and Director of Technology at Ensemble Studios, he works on engine and AI of the games. He is a graduate of University of Arizona with a computer engineering degree and has a wife Kristen.-Portfolio:...
said the design team "started out just accepting and embracing the fact that the Spartans have to be the coolest unit in the game. If they're not, it's not going to meet the Halo fans' expectations." To position the Spartans as "kingmaker
Kingmaker
Kingmaker is a term originally applied to the activities of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick — "Warwick the Kingmaker" — during the Wars of the Roses in England. The term has come to be applied more generally to a person or group that has great influence in a royal or political succession,...
s" in gameplay, the team gave them what it considered to be the "coolest" unit ability: hijacking enemy vehicles. The developers hoped players would become attached to individual Spartans in the campaign and gave each one an individual name; skirmish units were left nameless. The character design of the Spartans was meant to emphasize their relative inexperience and the setting of the game, which takes place decades before the events of the main trilogy. Devine commented on the Spartans' look:
...We felt because it was 20 years earlier, these are much younger Spartans. They aren't quite as experienced as Master Chief, and we looked a lot at combat infantry going into actual wars, and typically at the beginning of a war, especially the Vietnam War, if you look at the infantry, they're all loaded up. They have all the backpacks on, they have all the belts on, every single bit of armor is there, and they're carrying around lots of armor. At the end of the war, they've lost it all and just carry what they need. This is all they have. So if you look at our Spartans, they have more pieces of armor on going into the war. They have more markings on there, more pieces of armor. They've still got the belts on, they're still carrying around everything.
Ensemble expanded the Halo universe during the game's development, in order to create enough units to give players strategic options. Among the new units was the Gorgon, a biped mech
Mecha
A mech , is a science fiction term for a large walking bipedal tank or robot, including ones on treads and animal shapes.-Characteristics:...
that used weapons called Needlers to destroy light aircraft. However, Ensemble later realized that the Gorgon invalidated a rule they had established: "anything with two legs that walks" was an infantry unit. Instead, the team added a new aircraft called the Vampire. The UNSC, meanwhile, lacked a melee unit to match the Covenant's hand-to-hand power. Ensemble considered using the original, less advanced Spartan Mark I suits of armor, in keeping with Halo lore, but once added these units were indistinguishable from Spartans in appearance. Instead, they created a lumbering, mechanized unit called the Cyclops, a nod to Age of Mythology.
Time constraints prevented many elements from appearing in the final game. One such missing feature was a fatality system by which Spartans or Covenant leaders could inflict massive damage on large groups of units. Pottinger said that the animations, while interesting, did not mesh with the fast-paced combat of Halo Wars and raised balance concerns. Other elements based on Halo fiction did not work in a strategy game. Although more than 100 people worked on the project, which cost tens of millions of dollars, a Covenant campaign was never realized because of a lack of manpower and money.
Announcements
GameSpy
GameSpy Industries, Inc., known simply as GameSpy, is a division of IGN Entertainment, which operates a network of game websites and provides online video game-related services and software. GameSpy dates back to the 1996 release of an internet Quake server search program named QSpy. The current...
listed the trailer in its top 25 video game cinematic moments, because it showed "the world of Halo on a much grander scale".
Halo Wars was exhibited at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in 2007 and 2008. Devine narrated the soundtrack for a video shown at E3 2007, which was later made available on the Xbox Live Marketplace
Xbox Live Marketplace
The Xbox Live Marketplace is a virtual market designed for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console that allows Xbox Live members to download purchased or promotional content...
. This video described the game's controls, user interface, vehicles, special weapons, and new units. It also showed a UNSC base consisting of an airbase, vehicle depot, missile silo, and other buildings. IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
, Next Generation Magazine
Next Generation Magazine
Next Generation Magazine was a video game magazine that was made by Imagine Media publishing company . It was affiliated to and shared editorial with the UK's Edge magazine. Next Generation ran from January 1995 until January 2002. It was published by Jonathan Simpson-Bint and edited by Neil West...
, and PC World
PC World (magazine)
PC World is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal-technology products and services...
ranked Halo Wars as one of the most anticipated showings at E3.
On September 10, 2008, Ensemble Studios announced that it would close after Halo Wars completion. Ensemble founder Tony Goodman and other employees announced the formation of a new studio, Robot Entertainment
Robot Entertainment
Robot Entertainment is a video game publishing company created by the founders of the defunct Ensemble Studios, after being shut down by Microsoft. Other members of the company founded Bonfire Studios. Robot Entertainment was responsible for maintaining and updating Halo Wars until February 28,...
, shortly before the game's release; another group of ex-staff created Bonfire Studios
Bonfire Studios
Zynga Dallas is a video game development company based in Dallas, Texas. After Ensemble Studios was shut down by Microsoft, four different studios were created by members of Ensemble. Bonfire Studios was one of them. In late July 2010 the team released We Farm for Apple iOS. On October 5, 2010...
. Robot announced that, while developing new intellectual property, it would support Halo Wars and Age of Empires through a partnership with Microsoft Game Studios.
Audio
Halo Wars music was composed by Stephen RippyStephen Rippy
-Life and career:Rippy grew up in the Spring area of Harris County, Texas and now resides in Plano, Texas, near Dallas. Making video game music was not Rippy's original career goal...
, the composer for all of the Age of Empires games. Rippy wanted to write new material while maintaining continuity by reusing iconic elements of the Halo trilogy's music, written by Martin O'Donnell
Martin O'Donnell
Martin "Marty" O'Donnell is an American composer known for his work on video game developer Bungie's series, such as Myth, Oni, and Halo...
and partner Michael Salvatori
Michael Salvatori
Michael Salvatori is an American composer, best known for his collaboration with colleague Martin O'Donnell for the soundtracks to the Halo video game series. Salvatori became friends with O'Donnell in college; when O'Donnell was given a job offer to score a colleague's film, Salvatori and...
. Consultation with O'Donnell and Salvatori finished before Rippy became involved in the project, but the composer sent a compact disc of his work to O'Donnell halfway through the writing process. Before starting work on Halo Wars, Rippy listened to previous Halo soundtracks and searched for useful material in discarded Ensemble projects; "I'm a big fan of both cataloging that stuff and stealing from it without remorse," Rippy said. "Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until you really, really need it." Rippy and audio lead Kevin McMullan examined O'Donnell's tracks to identify elements to reuse in Halo Wars. Foregoing his usual method of writing melodies before determining the method of sound production, Rippy built melodies around synthesizer patches or drum loops. He felt that scoring for science fiction was a change of pace from his previous work, which was written for historical settings.
Rippy began writing music for the game in April 2007. "Some of the plot points of Halo Wars revolve around discovery, and I think that was my favorite idea to write to—that sense of, 'no one's seen this before,'" he said. The first two tracks combined repurposed elements from past projects with his efforts to convey the Halo sound. "Flollo" contained musical ideas Rippy had experimented with since his last project, Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs. "Bad Here Day" was the first piece in which he tried to incorporate the "Halo sound". Rippy felt it important to avoid repeating too many old themes because he wanted the game to have its own identity; however, he wanted to continue to incorporate choir and piano, elements he believed to be integral to the sound of previous Halo games. In adherence to an Ensemble Studios tradition, the tracks are often named after coined phrases and inside jokes, rather than in-game events.
By the end of 2007, Rippy had completed all of the gameplay music, including end credits, battle themes, and ambient world tracks. In the game's skirmish mode, the music reflects the environment rather than the warring factions. To ensure that the character of the music changed depending on the environment, he followed self-imposed rules; one environment could feature guitars, but not piano, for instance. To musically unify each world, he added a short introductory piece containing common elements. In contrast with the skirmish mode, the campaign mode contains different recurring melodies for each major character and the human ship Spirit of Fire. Rippy's most intensive work period was January 2008, when he began writing music for the game's cinematics; by this point, he had been working on the score for nine months. Rippy finished the score by February 2008, and, after three months, all tracks were ready to be recorded.
Although the previous live orchestrations for Halo games were performed by the Northwest Sinfonia in Seattle, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
, Rippy chose the FILMharmonic Orchestra of Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
to record Halo Wars music. Rippy had been in Prague attending recording sessions for Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties
Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties
Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties is the second official expansion pack for real-time strategy video game Age of Empires III developed through a collaboration between Ensemble Studios and Big Huge Games, and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The Mac version was ported over and developed...
and loved both the city and the sound the orchestra produced. The lower cost of recording in Eastern Europe was an additional benefit. The March 10–15 recording sessions involved 24 vocalists and 45 instrumentalists; choir and string sections were later overdubbed
Overdubbing
Overdubbing is a technique used by recording studios to add a supplementary recorded sound to a previously recorded performance....
to enlarge the sound. In all, roughly 65 minutes of Halo Wars 75-minute score were recorded in Prague. The final touches and production took place in Seattle; O'Donnell attended one of the mixing sessions.
Rippy used the Audiokinetic Wwise
Audiokinetic Wwise
Wwise , a middleware product from Audiokinetic Inc., is a video game audio engine, intended to be compatible with other full games engines, including Epic's Unreal Engine...
pipeline to create dynamic music
Dynamic music
Dynamic music is a concept used in many video games, whereby specific events cause the background music to change. Its first uses in major video games were Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge and Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss. It has since been used in such games as Mushroom Men and Guitar Hero...
that changes with the action in the game. Although Rippy used Wwise's tools only for dynamic music, they made audio system setup much easier than in previous Ensemble games. For each battle sequence, the musical cue was divided into sections and mixed differently for each section. "When a cue is triggered, an intro plays and then the game randomly picks between all of those elements for as long as the battle continues," Rippy explained. "Once it's over, an outro plays and then it's back to the regular "world" music. It was an interesting way to work, and I'd like to push it further if there’s an opportunity in the future."
Four tracks from Halo Wars were included as a preview on a bonus DVD bundled with Halo Trilogy—The Complete Original Soundtracks, a December 2008 compilation of previous Halo music. The tracks were mixed in Dolby Digital
Dolby Digital
Dolby Digital is the name for audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. It was originally called Dolby Stereo Digital until 1994. Except for Dolby TrueHD, the audio compression is lossy. The first use of Dolby Digital was to provide digital sound in cinemas from 35mm film prints...
5.1-channel Surround Sound
Surround sound
Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...
and packaged with video of recording sessions and the "Five Long Years" trailer. The soundtrack was released on February 17 as a standalone compact disc and as a digital download
Music download
A music download is the transferral of music from an Internet-facing computer or website to a user's local computer. This term encompasses both legal downloads and downloads of copyright material without permission or payment...
. AOL Radio
AOL Radio
AOL Radio powered by Slacker, , is an online radio service available only in the United States.- Roots :...
secured the exclusive rights to premiere the soundtrack early, playing a new track at the beginning of every hour.
Release
The pre-release playable demo for Halo Wars was first mentioned in the October 2007 issue of Official Xbox MagazineOfficial Xbox Magazine
Official Xbox Magazine is a monthly video game magazine which started in November 2001 around the launch of the original Xbox. A preview issue was released for E3 2001, with another preview issue for November 2001. The magazine is bundled with a disc that includes game demos, preview videos and...
, and it became available for download on February 5, 2009; redemption codes for early access were given starting January 29. According to Microsoft, the game was downloaded by more than 2 million Xbox Live
Xbox Live
Xbox Live is an online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service created and operated by Microsoft Corporation. It is currently the only online gaming service on consoles that charges users a fee to play multiplayer gaming. It was first made available to the Xbox system in 2002...
Gold members in the first five days, and set a record for most demo downloads on the service.
In addition to the standard retail version, a Limited Collector's Edition of Halo Wars was made available. To attract Halo 3s player base, Microsoft bundled early access to the Mythic Map Pack, a collection of three Halo 3 multiplayer maps, with the collector's edition. A 48-page, half-size hardcover graphic novel
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
was also included; titled Halo Wars: Genesis, it was created by Phil Noto, Graeme Devine, and Eric Nylund. It explores the background stories of Anders, the Arbiter, Forge and Cutter. Other bonuses included a unique in-game vehicle, trading cards, and a Spirit of Fire patch. Players who pre-ordered the game from certain retailers received a special in-game Warthog vehicle with flame decals. GameStop
GameStop
GameStop Corporation is an American video game and entertainment software retailer. The company, whose headquarters is in Grapevine, Texas, United States, operates 6,500 retail stores throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New...
announced that on February 28, 2009, one thousand stores in the United States would hold Halo Wars tournaments, and two thousand GameStop stores held midnight releases for the game. European markets sold a "Best of Halo" bundle of Halo Wars, Halo 3 and an Xbox 360.
On release, Halo Wars reached second place on the United Kingdom weekly sales charts behind Killzone 2. Halo Wars reached only 16.7% of Halo 3s first-week sales, but it outsold Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed and published by Electronic Arts for the Windows, Mac OS X and Xbox 360 platforms, and released internationally in March 2007...
threefold, making it the fastest-selling console strategy game. The following week, Halo Warss sales were ranked fifth. In Australia, Halo Wars weekly sales ranked highest, ahead of Killzone 2. By March 12, the limited edition and standard version were ranked second and third, respectively, on the United States Xbox 360 sales charts, behind Call of Duty: World at War
Call of Duty: World at War
Call of Duty: World at War is a first-person shooter video game developed by Treyarch and published by Activision for PC, PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360. It is generally considered to be the fifth mainstream game of the Call of Duty series and returns the setting to World War II. The game was...
. Gamasutra
Gamasutra
Gamasutra is a website founded in 1997 for video game developers. It is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb , a division of United Business Media, and acts as the online sister publication to the print magazine Game Developer...
attributed the surge in Halo 3 sales to the release of Halo Wars; the former was fourth in the United States and second in Australia in sales of Xbox 360 games, and reappeared on the list of top 20 United States console games for February.
Before the game's release, industry analyst Michael Pachter estimated that Halo Wars would sell 2 million units. On March 19, 2009, Microsoft announced that the game had sold 1 million units and that players had spent 118 total years of time in online skirmish matches. According to NPD Group
NPD Group
The NPD Group, Inc. is a leading North American market research company. The NPD Group consistently ranks among the top 25 market research companies in the independent Honomichl Top 50 report, which the media and the research industry acknowledge as a credible source of information on the market...
's March sales figures, Halo Wars sold 639,000 copies in North America through March, making it the third best-selling game in the market.
Downloadable content
After Ensemble's closing, Robot Entertainment announced that it was developing downloadable contentDownloadable content
Downloadable content is official additional content for a video game distributed through the Internet. Downloadable content can be of several types, ranging from a single in-game outfit to an entirely new, extensive storyline, similarly to an expansion pack. As such, DLC may add new game modes,...
(DLC) for Halo Wars. Pottinger described support as ongoing rather than a one-time effort and compared it to Bungie's post-launch additions to Halo 3. He stated that Robot would also work on balance issues, bug fixes, and other patches.
The first DLC package, Strategic Options, added three new multiplayer modes. "Keepaway" is similar to capture the flag
Capture the flag
Capture the Flag is a traditional outdoor sport generally played by children, where two teams each have a flag and the objective is to capture the other team's flag, located at the team's "base," and bring it safely back to their own base...
; in it, players try to capture and hold Forerunner units. In "Tug-of-war", players earn points by fielding large armies and destroying enemy units. In "Reinforcement", players receive units as reinforcements, rather than training them at bases. The amount of available resources and reactors determines which types of units are deployed and the upgrades they can earn. Strategic Options was released on May 19, 2009, after a patch
Patch (computing)
A patch is a piece of software designed to fix problems with, or update a computer program or its supporting data. This includes fixing security vulnerabilities and other bugs, and improving the usability or performance...
that addressed software bug
Software bug
A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...
s and game balance
Game balance
Game balance is a concept in game design describing fairness or balance of power in a game between multiple players or strategic options. Each team or person would be equally matched in every aspect.- Overview :...
issues. The update garnered criticism for its small size (2 megabytes) and high price (800 Microsoft points
Microsoft Points
Microsoft Points are the currency of the Xbox Live Marketplace, Games for Windows - Live Marketplace, Windows Live Gallery, and Zune online stores. The points allow users to purchase content without a credit card and to reduce the number of small credit card transaction fees, which Microsoft would...
). Pottinger responded on the Halo Wars forums that the game modes were small downloads "because they are rules. There is some new content, but it's obviously a different type of content compared to a map." Robot released a second DLC package on July 21, 2009. The DLC, dubbed "Historic Battles", contains four additional maps and four new Xbox Live achievements.
Reception
Halo Wars garnered generally positive reviews. The game has an average of 81.92% and 82/100 on aggregate web sites Game RankingsGame Rankings
GameRankings is a website that collects review scores from both offline and online sources to give an average rating. It indexes over 315,000 articles relating to more than 14,500 games.GameRankings is owned by CBS Interactive...
and Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
. Critics were split on whether Halo Wars was a successful console translation of the RTS genre. GameSpy
GameSpy
GameSpy Industries, Inc., known simply as GameSpy, is a division of IGN Entertainment, which operates a network of game websites and provides online video game-related services and software. GameSpy dates back to the 1996 release of an internet Quake server search program named QSpy. The current...
's Allen Rausch argued that, as Halo: Combat Evolved
Halo: Combat Evolved
Halo: Combat Evolved, frequently referred to as Halo: CE, or Halo 1, is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The first game of the Halo franchise, it was released on November 15, 2001 as a launch title for the Xbox gaming system, and is...
showed that first-person shooters could work on consoles, Halo Wars "is an RTS ... on a console ... and it works". Tom Price of TeamXbox
TeamXbox
TeamXbox is a gaming media web site dedicated to Microsoft's Xbox and Xbox 360 platforms. While the majority of content is Xbox and Xbox 360 related, the site occasionally covers general technology and other video game news....
said that gamers have been waiting a long time for a console RTS "to get it right", and Halo Wars did so; reviewers for Official Xbox Magazine
Official Xbox Magazine
Official Xbox Magazine is a monthly video game magazine which started in November 2001 around the launch of the original Xbox. A preview issue was released for E3 2001, with another preview issue for November 2001. The magazine is bundled with a disc that includes game demos, preview videos and...
credited Ensemble with creating a strategy game that felt "absolutely at home on the console", rather than a "poorly shoehorned ... port" of a PC game with clumsy controls. 1UP
1UP.com
1UP.com is a video game website owned by IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corporation. Previously, the site was owned by Ziff Davis before being sold to UGO Entertainment in 2009....
's Thierry Nguyen was neutral about whether it was a good RTS game or Halo title, but called it a "solid beginning towards what could be a really good console RTS". Digital Trends
Digital Trends
DigitalTrends.com is a high-tech lifestyle, technology news and information website created by Ian Bell and Dan Gaul in June 2001. It publishes news, reviews, guides, how-to articles, descriptive videos and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics products...
' Scott Steinberg said that, while not perfect, Halo Wars made a strong case for the viability of RTS on consoles; "There's certainly the potential to have PC holdouts seriously reconsidering hoisting the controller." Peter Hartlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
offered a dismissive summation of the game as "a remedial game—real-time strategy for dummies", and stated that the game offered relatively little innovation when compared to other Halo titles.
Reviewers generally praised Halo Warss controls. Critics who were less experienced RTS players, such as Darren Zenko of the Toronto Star
Toronto Star
The Toronto Star is Canada's highest-circulation newspaper, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its print edition is distributed almost entirely within the province of Ontario...
, appreciated the streamlined RTS experience. In contrast, critics such as Luke Anderson of GameSpot
GameSpot
GameSpot is a video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information. The site was launched in May 1, 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. It was purchased by ZDNet, a brand which was later purchased by CNET Networks. CBS Interactive, which...
said that the game lacked the depth necessary to attract more seasoned RTS players. Some critics were frustrated by the lack of control features—specifically, the ability to create and manage groups of units, the lack of hotkeys, the inability to set rally points for different units, and the need to return to the base to adjust production. Nguyen wrote that "finesse maneuvers [...] are more difficult to pull off than they should be". Brett Molina of USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
said that experts would find the action oversimplified, but that the game "is an excellent choice for fans of the Halo universe and players new to real-time strategy". Reviewers for GameSpy, G4tv, and Eurogamer stated that the controls worked well mainly because the developers omitted features to make most options quickly available; for example, limiting base construction to select areas made sure players could easily find their buildings.
Reviewers considered the factions balanced. Eurogamer
Eurogamer
Eurogamer is a Brighton-based website focused on video games news, reviews, previews and interviews. It is operated by Eurogamer Network Ltd., which was formed in 1999 by brothers Rupert and Nick Loman. Eurogamer has grown to become one of the most important European-based websites focused on...
's Kieron Gillen
Kieron Gillen
Kieron Gillen is a British computer games and music journalist, as well as a comic book author. Gillen has worked for many years as a video game journalist and has, more recently, worked on various comics. He is perhaps best known for his creator-owned comic Phonogram, created with artist Jamie...
commented that the Covenant was harder to master, especially because the campaign served as a tutorial for the UNSC, but no similar introduction was available for the Covenant. However, he said the two sides were "authentically different", and each offered its own challenges to players. Some critics, such as Nick Cowen of The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
, wished that the Flood was a playable faction; in contrast, Ryan Geddes of IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
disliked the Flood and appreciated their exclusion. Will Porter of IGN UK enjoyed the rock-paper-scissors RTS mechanics, but said that "since the game is singularly crap at indicating which units are rocks and which scissors," players had to learn which units were best via trial and error, an issue that was more prevalent with the Covenant.
The game's plot was well-received. Reviewers praised the game's cinematics and voice acting. Geddes said the story was good, but not on par with those of Bungie's Halo games, and that most of the characters were stereotypical and somewhat unlikable. Critics noted that for a strategy game, the campaign was rather short, with only 15 missions; Nate Ralph of Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
completed each in fewer than 40 minutes. Jon Wilcox of Total Video Games wrote "there's an ebb and flow" to the gameplay, with "lengthy chapters cut with shorter punchy ones or time-based missions, all together creating a surprisingly compelling experience". Wilcox said the additions of performance-based medals added replay value
Replay value
Replay value or replayability is a term found in combination with video games, but it may be also used to describe other kinds of games, movies, music, or theater plays. In video games, the term replay value is used to describe the entertainment value of playing a game more than once...
to the campaign. Price said that, although the story and mission structure of the game was fairly standard, levels that were "rote" in other RTS games seemed more substantial in Halo Wars. Reviewers such as Geddes, Wilcox, and Patrick Kolan of IGN UK said that the lack of a Covenant campaign was an unfortunate omission.
Publications judged the multiplayer aspect of the game well. Wilcox noted that, although the multiplayer mode "added [nothing] new [to RTS games], at the very least it's a solid experience that expands the longevity of Halo Wars." Adam Biessener of Game Informer
Game Informer
Game Informer is an American-based monthly magazine featuring articles, news, strategy, and reviews of popular video games and associated consoles. It was formed in August 1991, when FuncoLand started publishing a six-page magazine, free in all its retail locations...
wrote that Halo Wars gameplay was better against human players, as campaign "gimmicks" and poor artificial intelligence were not an issue. The Mirrors Kevin Lynch found fault with the "limited" variety of game modes.
Critics generally agreed that Ensemble re-created the Halo universe's aesthetic well. Gillen said knowledge of the game universe could alleviate some issues of player ignorance regarding units' actions: "It's not just the geek thrill of seeing a Scarab in action—it's that you understand what the Scarab means on the battlefield (trouble)," he wrote. "We know which characters are best against tanks, and which are probably best in special vehicles." Nguyen said that, although the core units meshed well, the inclusion of Ensemble-developed units gave Halo Wars the feeling of a generic science-fiction title. While giving the game a mixed review, Anderson said that the authentic-looking units and environments went a long way to integrating the game with the rest of the series. Wilcox commented that with the Halo-inspired menu system and Rippy's score, "before the campaign even begins, the message is clear: this is still very much a Halo game." Overall, Halo Wars was judged a fitting final game for Ensemble.