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Halo Wars : Interview with Phil Spencer and Dave Luehmann
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General Manager of Microsoft Game Studios Publishing;
and General Manager
of Microsoft Game Studios Internal Development -
X06, Barcelona, september
27th 2006
XCN
(Xbox Community Network), with which Xbox Gazette is affiliated, has been able
to ask some questions to Phil Spencer and Dave Luehmann from Microsoft, about
the game Halo Wars, during the X06. XCN
: Could you give us an introduction to Halo Wars?
Dave Luehmann :
Ensemble Studios is developing Halo Wars. They've made their name as one of the
best RTS development teams in the world and their work with Age of Empires bears
witness to that. For a while now they've wanted to turn their hand to bringing
the RTS experience to the console. They had been working for almost a year on
making the RTS and strategy genre work on a console, making it fun for the console
gamer given the control method and the lack of a keyboard. Once they'd figured
that out we started thinking about the kind of intellectual property we were going
to add to the mix, and Halo seemed the obvious choice. XCN
: So the game engine came before Halo was involved?
Dave Luehmann :
The intention was never to slam the Halo universe into this game. Rather, we realised
that we had something very special and so we said let's add to that by using something
like Halo to really enhance that experience. XCN
: How does Ensemble and Bungie work together?
Dave Luehmann : There's
a lot of travel involved! The teams love to meet face-to-face to talk about the
way the game looks, the way it feels, and the way it sounds. There's also a lot
of cooperation from a story standpoint, so both teams are working very closely
together. XCN : Bungie is known
for being very protective of Halo. Has that caused problems in development for
Ensemble?
Dave Luehmann : I think Bungie is very careful with Halo and
that's great. Ensemble is also very respectful of that and anything that happens
in Halo Wars will happen under the full blessing of Bungie. There's a real spirit
of cooperation. Bungie hasn't been in any way difficult - in fact they've been
very forthcoming. Ensemble is also very protective of its role in the RTS development
space and wouldn't put its name on anything that didn't live up to its past. It's
a great marriage, because both teams are very proud of their work. XCN
: Will you be able to play as the Covenant in Halo Wars?
Dave Luehmann
: I don't think we've made any promises on that… 
XCN : Is Halo Wars a straight
RTS or is it doing something different?
Phil Spencer : I think the term
RTS will stick but when you play it I think you'll see that it is very difficult.
Ensemble started by working out how the strategy game could fit into the console
environment, not from the point of view of working out how they could make a Halo
RTS game. Halo actually started as an RTS on Mac, but this is a completely new
endeavour. XCN : What are the
issues behind sorting out the joypad controls for a console RTS like Halo Wars?
Phil
Spencer : You say issues, but we say opportunities. Using a mouse and keyboard
might seem like a great way to play an RTS, but for many players the sheer number
of keys and the poor mapability of options puts them off. The ablility to access
the commands you use all the time isn't that different to the commands you never
use. With a joypad you can prioritise the main commands so that the player can
reach them quickly and easily, while demoting the second tier of commands. I also
think there's an opportunity in the future to play an RTS on Windows with a joypad.
There's a lot of potential in mapping RTS controls to a joypad.
Dave Luehmann
: Let's not forget that only a few years ago people said that an FPS wouldn't
work on console because of the controls, and look where we are now! We're always
trying to change how the business works, and that's what we're trying to do with
Halo Wars. XCN : There are so
many Halo stories being told - Halo 3, Halo Wars, the Halo movie, novels, graphic
novels and so on. Will there be lots of crossover in the narrative of Halo Wars
with these other sources?
Phil Spencer : The fiction will remain true
to itself. Maintaining the consistency and the quality of the Halo story is all-important.
You'll see references to other things in the Halo universe because it's all one
world. If something has happened in the past, it will have happened across all
the whole Halo universe. We actually have a team dedicated to guarding that continuity
so we don't need to wipe the slate clean every time we add a new chapter to the
Halo story. Also, for the people who read all the novels we need to make sure
that they don't have to forget about something they experienced in the Halo universe
because we haven't checked it out properly. XCN
: Will Halo 3 or Halo Wars launch first?
Dave Luehmann : We haven't
announced a date for either. Unfortunately! XCN
: Many thanks for your time Phil and Dave!
Related
links : - Halo
Wars videos - Halo
Wars : official site - Ensemble
Studios - Bungie -
Other Xbox 360 interviews
Max73, Xbox
Gazette, october 2nd 2006 Thanks to : Phil Spencer,
Dave Luehmann, Graeme Boyd, XCN
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