Exit Halo 3, Enter Halo Wars

Immediately before the release of Halo 3, the (apparently) last game in Master Chief's interplanetary saga, rumors began to surface that the Halo universe would be used as support for a real time strategy title set years before the events of the original Halo, as the Covenant and the Earth forces are engaged in planetary and interplanetary battles.

The team at Ensemble have pitched the idea to Microsoft and now they are in full development. And yet they found the time to sit down with Gameplayer and talk a bit about the game they are making. The first point touched upon was the decision to do a console RTS. Graeme Devine, who is the lead designer on Halo Wars, says that "For a long time Ensemble has been doing RTS games for PC and a group of people here, myself included, felt that a console could do an RTS game really well, just control-wise. People have always presumed that it couldn't be done without a mouse and keyboard, but I've always maintained that the 360 controller would do just fine".

The game will be built around a core engine that allows epic confrontations to take place between the Coventant and the UNSC. All the units from the Halo series will make appearances, although some of them might be in different incarnations as the game is set before the events in the FPS games. Devine believes the RTS genre can add a level of depth and a couple of experiences that a shooter could never manage.

He says, "But the idea of a real-time strategy game is not to be just one but to be many; taking that perspective on the war between the Covenant and the UNSC. You know, finding out what it's like when the UNSC get there and don't crash land their spaceship on a planet. What it's like when we sit down and you actually fight the frontlines as they're meant to fight the frontlines, with LOTS of Scorpion tanks, with LOTS of Warthogs. You know, to offer that perspective on the war. And I think that's what the fans want to see, just that different angle on the actual battle".

Actual gameplay details are pretty slim at this point. There are plans for a Company of Heroes like management scheme where squads and not individual units take center stage. There are also plans for making the game expandable through downloadable content, such as new units and new maps.

So far, there's no estimated timetable for the release of the game, but it seems that there will be at least a year till you can enjoy this Master Chief flavored RTS.