Halo Wars RTS In The Works At Ensemble

Speaking of well kept secrets, Microsoft continued their salvo of X06 announcements with Halo Wars - an Xbox 360 real-time strategy game taking place in Bungie's Halo universe. Wow, who would've thought!... Oh, wait. Actually, somebody did predict this weeks ago, and with great accuracy as well - by speculating that Ensemble Studios could be working on such a Halo RTS. Which turns up to be perfectly right, as the team behind the Age of Empires series was indeed confirmed as the developer of Halo Wars.

But even so, it's certainly surprising that Microsoft announced this strategy game exclusively for the Xbox 360, once again leaving PC gamers with little hope for a new Halo experience on their trusty home computers. One can only wonder why would they do that, when the genre is so clearly tailored for the PC.

But even if there would be a PC version some time after Halo Wars' release on the Xbox 360 (which has yet to be set), it would still feel like a console game, as Ensemble is dumbing creating it for the Xbox 360 from the ground up. The game already has a website in place at HaloWars.com, and here's what the F.A.Q. has to say about this issue:

"Halo Wars was created for the Xbox 360 from the ground up, which meant we didn't have to make compromises or shoe-horn in artifacts from a Windows PC game. We were able to take all the best aspects of RTS games, make them work perfectly on the Xbox 360, and exclude the rest."

It's also interesting to point out that, before Halo, Bungie developed the first two Myth RTS games, and that at least one of the people credited with the design of Myth II (Max Hoberman) has been working over in Texas (where Ensemble is also based) since Spring. Not to mention that Microsoft shut down the fan-made Halogen project (an RTS MOD, go figure!) just weeks ago. With so many "coincidences", I guess this was bound to happen.

But getting back on topic, Halo Wars will take place before Halo 1, during the UNSC's first deadly encounters with the Covenant. Players will lead the crew of the UNSC's "Spirit of Fire" from initial skirmishes to an all out war against the evil Covenant. And... that's about it for now. There's also a great cinematic trailer available on the game's website, and some wallpapers that we also added locally. Worth a look.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)