RicaneliteHalo Wars?? Mater Chief in a RTS!!!
Microsoft just couldn't help itself at X06 this year, announcing three new Halo properties to the already massive juggernaut Halo 3 and trumping all its other titles. The Xbox 360 manufacturer announced Ensemble Studios, known for its many excellent strategy and RTS series, is working on a real-time strategy dubbed "Halo Wars." Halo was originally designed as an RTS on the Macintosh and transformed through several genre iterations before it hit, and stuck, with the first-person shooter everyone now knows and loves.
In a first major step for Microsoft, Halo Wars will not be developed by its creator, Bungie. Instead, as aforementioned, Halo Wars is in development by Ensemble Studios. This new move signifies Microsoft's full dedication to expanding its most popular franchise both creatively and financially, but it also means that Bungie is giving up an unspecified amount of creative control to another developer. Nobody doubts Ensemble's skills as an RTS developer, but Bungie has been extremely protective of its property in the past, and to let another developer (or to submit to Microsoft's demands to make more Halo games come hell or highwater), is a significant step. Futhermore, it sees Bungie not only as the developer of Halo 3, but as an overseer of the Halo property in multiple ways: as a keeper of the license and essence for the movie, as an overseer of the Halo universe in its RTS form, and finally, as a guide for Peter Jackson and Wingnut Interactive as they forge new waters between games, interactivity and story-telling.
