After having finished the fight last September, rabid fans of the Halo franchise had to be content with sticking their friends with grenades online and waiting for the next game set in the Haloverse, the first RTS in the series - Halo Wars. Though the continuation of the story (or rather, the prequel) was expected long before Halo 3 wrapped up (or not) the Master Chief saga, few expected it to take the form of a real time strategy game that Bungie, in collaboration with Age of Empires legend Ensemble Studios are expected to spring on us later this year. RTS games on the Xbox 360, like Command & Conquer: Tiberium Wars before it, have always been iffy, what with the level of control and freedom that a conventional keyboard-mouse combination offers, but Ensemble Studios, like every other console RTS dev before them, have claimed to have worked out the nuances of controlling the game using a standard Xbox 360 controller without frustration levels peaking into the red-zone.
While we wait for the official demo of the game to check out the control scheme for ourselves and speculate on the possibility of wreaking havoc with the Covenant war machine, one of our friends over at Microsoft, like many of us from time to time, developed a case of verbal diarrhoea and slipped us some really interesting information. Now, while we are never in the habit of starting rumors, this one comes from someone on the inside who swears on its authenticity on pain of death, and we’ve been sitting on this one for almost a couple of weeks now, trying to verify it before we say anything about it.
Finally, after enough assurances that this is not a cruel hoax, we can let you, our dear readers, know that Halo Wars, touted as an Xbox 360 exclusive, is also apparently in development for the PC. But that’s not all - apparently the game will also feature cross-platform play, a la UNO and Shadowrun, between gamers on the Microsoft console and their PC counterparts.
Of course, most of this was to be expected, considering that almost every Microsoft game on the console has inexorably made it to the PC as well, albeit a couple of months or years later. And while we haven’t been told whether the game will be made available for both the Xbox 360 and the PC simultaneously, it stands to reason that it must be the case if the cross-platform rumor is indeed true. And especially considering the fact that Ensemble Studios has boundless expertise developing RTSes for the PC, it makes even more sense that the game would end up on the PC as well, since it would be a waste to squander all their talents as a PC developer on a console-exclusive strategy title.
And better yet, this should also enable Microsoft to expand the Games for Windows LIVE portfolio, which hasn’t been seeing any serious takers thanks to its feature rich brother on the Xbox 360 (deservedly) hogging all the limelight. But for all those people wondering how the online cross-platform gameplay is going to work, Ensemble, according to our man on the inside, has ditched the complex resource and unit management typically seen in an Age game in favor of something that resembles World in Conflict’s online gameplay model. From what we’ve heard, Halo Wars will take the best of games such as World in Conflict and Company of Heroes have to offer, allowing gamers to control a smaller group of units, such as a limited number of Warthogs and Wolverines, which can be swapped with other units as and when the situation on the battlefield demands it. And the more points the units gather, they get access to superweapons such as orbital particle cannons, like World in Conflict’s nukes, wipe out every friend and foe in the blast radius.
Strangely enough, we’ve also heard some people claim that the game, confirmed to have co-operative play, will allow the PC amigos to create their own maps (as is usual with Ensemble’s games) and in addition to that, play those with gamers on the Xbox 360. Apparently, this makes cross-platform gaming the only way Xbox 360 owners will be able to play on custom maps on the console. Since our insider couldn’t confirm or deny this little detail, we’ll just dismiss this as wishful thinking, since Microsoft is usually intolerably harsh when it comes to custom content on Xbox LIVE. (Unreal Tournament III, anyone?)
In the end, we’ll be more than happy if all of this does happen as it is rumored to, since PC owners have always been given the short end of the stick when it comes to the Halo games, something which we hope Ensemble and Bungie will be able to remedy with Halo Wars. If it doesn’t, oh well, there’s always StarCraft 2!
Link: http://theangrypixel.com/blog/2008/01/28/fog-of-war-halo-wars-for-pc/
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