Halo Wars on Schedule: Despite some bad weather in Dallas in both December and early January that sent people home early or even prevented them from coming to work (no snow plows or salt trucks means traffic becomes paralyzed when roads are icy) we have hit our milestones as work winds down.
We believe the game is in good shape and will be available in stores as promised March 3. At CES a release date of February 28 was mistakenly announced and also credit for development of the game was mistakenly given to Bungie, not Ensemble Studios. Corrections are being made where possible.

Halo Wars Coverage from CES: 1UP has some coverage from seeing the game prominently displayed at CES. We are encouraged to read how yet another journalist believes that our team did a great job with the controls and getting people into what is essentially a new genre of game for the console.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3172212

Leader Profiles: GameDaily has posted the first of the profiles of Halo Wars leaders. Since each of these leaders can have a great influence on your tactics and strategy, understanding the strengths and advantages of each is going to be very useful. Check our Forge and The Arbiter here.

http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/galleries/halo-wars-character-profiles-forge-and-the-arbiter/?page=1

Halo Wars Achievements: The list of these has been released and you can check it out at the link below. The list may provide some new insight to the game. There are 50 achievements worth 1000 points. One that amused a lot of people is titled “Everything’s Better with Bacon” (5 points). To earn this one you have to destroy 50 Grunts in Mission 1 by ramming them with Warthogs. I understand the name came from Dave Pottinger with a little help with the crew at G4.

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/game/halo-wars/achievements/

Every Halo Wars Unit, Every Building, Described: You can read about and see images of the units and buildings in the game at our Halo Wars community site. The link below opens the UNSC material. To see the Covenant side go to the Game Info menu and select the Covenant option.

http://www.halowars.com/GameInfo/UNSC.aspx

Sumthing Else Music Works Announces Halo Wars Soundtrack: Stephen Rippy wrote the music for our game that was performed by the FILMharmonic Orchestra and Choir Prague. Read a little bit about the making of the music and the list of tracks here. The soundtrack and additional features will be released on two discs February 17.

http://www.music4games.net/Index.aspx

Letters from Gamers: The most noteworthy letter I have received recently came from a 10 year old boy who wanted to point out 10 mistakes he believes we made in Age of Mythology. He disagreed with what roles we had assigned to various gods (“Anubis is not a god of judgment”) and our spelling of a god’s name (Ra or Re). He finished his letter by saying the mistakes he points out may not be absolute but that he believes he is correct and that he hopes we do better in our next game.

I am going to completely disregard the fact that a ten-year old is playing a game rated T and say good for him for getting so into it that he takes the trouble to contact us. I think it is great that he was so interested in the topic of mythology that he obviously has done a lot of research.

I did write him back with several lame excuses for our different interpretations, including these. First, I doubt many scholars today completely agree on how the different gods of Egypt were perceived in ancient times and I expect the roles of individual gods may have changed over the multiple thousands of years that they were worshipped. I have been to Egypt and I believe I recall being told that the roles of various gods changed over the millennia as the underlying culture went through changes. And secondly, we were making a game to be entertainment, not educational software.

When we decided we wanted a special effect or power in the game, we matched as we wished a god to that power, whether he or she was directly correlated or not. Gameplay came first, not mythological accuracy. We borrowed from what we could learn about the different mythologies to make a game that was fun to play. Beyond entertaining people we did hope that the topics of the Age games had the secondary benefit of encouraging people, especially young people, to learn more. In this case it sounds like we succeeded.

We receive communications from gamers regularly, often suggesting ideas for improving one of our games like the one above, or just saying thanks for games particularly enjoyed. Since the announcement that Ensemble Studios was to be closed by Microsoft, we have received a lot of support and thanks from many of you as email, forum comments, and even actual letters. We appreciate all of this.
 
Halo Wars Swag: The team got a few more pieces of memorabilia to take with them to whatever is next, including our traditional Lucite plaque, which has been given out for every game we have made since Age of Empires II. These stand about 8 inches tall and display the box cover or a piece of magazine art for the game. I have six different of these now on a shelf above my desk and just glancing at them brings back a flood of memories associated with each project. I am sure that will be the case as well in the years ahead.

We also got two final Halo Wars t-shirts. One is brownish gray with the Spirit of Fire emblem on the front. The back says “Restricted Access/Ensemble Studios Development Team/Level 16.” Our address is Suite 16 in our building and access actually is restricted (you have to speak to our receptionist to get passed up the elevator). The second shirt is black long-sleeved, but with the Spirit of Fire emblem on the back. The front says “Dev Team/Ensemble Studios/UNSC.”

My guess is that over the 15 years Ensemble Studios existed we have passed out between 40 and 50 shirts, most for specific games. The first I recall was a black polo shirt that just had our studio name on the ***, lettered in very computer-language-like font.

Wrapping up Soon: The next blog entry will probably be the last one as we shut down ES at the end of the month.

Bruce Shelley