Creating a strategy game based in the Halo universe gave Ensemble the chance to take a rich franchise and flesh it out in new ways. As huge Halo fans, this was awesome for us. And as designers, this was required. The Halo shooter games have put a lot of different units in the universe, but a strategy game has different needs: We have specific unit roles that need to be filled, and we have to have enough units of each type to ensure that even the basic strategies have multiple options.

When we originally spec'd out the Covenant, we gave them a ground-based, antiair unit called the Gorgon (above left) -- a bulbous, biped walker that used heavy Needlers to rip apart thin-skinned aircraft. Once it was in the game, though, we realized that we'd created a recognition problem: was the Gorgon a vehicle or infantry unit? We intended for it to be a vehicle, but the legs were causing problems, since we also said that "anything with two legs that walks is a dude." The final nail in the Gorgon coffin? The Covenant already had too many ground vehicles; we needed more air units.

Enter the Vampire (above right): a flying, antiair unit armed with heavy Needlers. Once we picked an appropriately "ethereal" name, its unique ability became obvious. The Vampire has the Stasis beam that can prevent enemy aircraft from moving; once upgraded, this beam can drain health from the target and heal the Vampire.

No. 2 -- "December Madness" hits Ensemble

We have a lot of fun with various pools and tournaments, for events like fantasy football or March Madness. Back during the Age of Empires II days, we started doing tournaments at the end of the game's production. By the end, most folks are playtesting 24/7 anyway, so they get pretty good at the game. Well, by our standards, anyway -- it's a complete myth that most developers are great at their games. Sure, we have a professional balance team that's astoundingly good at playing our games, but frankly, most of us kinda suck.

Our tournaments have gotten progressively more intense and organized. For Halo Wars, we've got actual trophies, are giving away Xbox 360 consoles and Halo Laser Tag sets, and so on. Karen McMullan, one of content designers, has even gone the extra mile this time to prepare Ensemble December Madness brackets. Everyone can put in their brackets to try to predict the winners in each game; we've got 29 teams, so it should be a challenge to get them all correct.

No. 3 -- A soft spot for the Cyclops

The Halo universe has a lot of ranged combat units. That makes sense; it's sci-fi, after all. Strategy gamers want more options, though. When we looked at the UNSC unit list, we quickly realized that the UNSC was severely lacking in hand-to-hand power. Spartans can do ranged and close combat, but we needed another type of fighter more clearly oriented around melee damage.

We bounced around for a while on what the actual unit would be. We tried the lore-accurate Mark1 armor suits -- a precursor to the more modern Spartan armor. In practice, they were just too close to the Spartans and not distinguishable enough in-game. We had to make our new melee unit stand out more, so we ended up with a lumbering mechanized suit that couldn't be confused with the Spartan at all: the Cyclops.

The Cyclops can beat the crap out of anything around him, though his mobility's limited by his speed. In Halo Wars, that's not enough; he has to have a unique ability. In fact, that's where his name comes from. We've got a lot of fond memories of Age of Mythology -- there's a lot of that game in Halo Wars, actually. One of our favorite units from AOM is the Cyclops. He's a big, hulking brute that can pick up enemies and hurl them for extra fun. Thus, the Halo Wars Cyclops takes his name and ability from his Age of Mythology ancestor. Beating your opponent's Scorpion tanks with the Cyclops is a lot of fun, but there's an extra "in your face" element if you can then throw those pieces of debris for extra damage.

No. 4 -- Fun with names

Most developers work in a few nods to friends and family in their games. We're no different. A sample of the "inside references" within Halo Wars:

--We know there are a fixed number of Spartans in the Halo universe, but they're not all named. With Halo Wars introducing a few more Spartans to the lexicon, we had to come up with new, unique names. One's a nod to our lead campaign designer, Jerome Jones.
--One of our Skirmish maps called "Fort Deen" (above) is named after one of our senior designers, Tim Deen.
--My kids are named Andrew and Thomas. They're young boys and, as such, like pirates a lot. The achievement "Alas, Poor Andrew Thomas" is awarded once you get the first skull in the campaign. After all, what's more pirate-y than a skull? And it's a goofy Shakespeare joke, to boot.
--The achievement "Big Al's Scooter" (awarded for a quick Skirmish win) contains the nicknames of producer Chris Rippy's two kids.

No. 5 -- "The Magic Y Button" fixes failed abilities

For a long time, we had the mantra that Halo Wars was "playable with only the left stick and four face buttons." That was good. I really love simple statements like that. At that time, the mapping for the four face buttons was as follows:

A: Select (in various forms)
B: Cancel (cancel selection, menus, powers, etc.)
X: Move/Attack
Y: Leader Menu (for transporting, powers)

Unfortunately, we had a problem: We wanted to put in an ability system for the units. We knew that'd be fun, but we didn't have a good button for it. As such, when we tried it, the system just didn't go over well. No one used the abilities enough to justify the gameplay bandwidth we'd allocated for them. We tried a few things, but we ended up cutting unit abilities out of the game entirely.

Almost a year later, we kept circling around the abilities idea again, because the game really needed more to do in combat. But we knew we were out of buttons, and we didn't want something as cumbersome as remappable buttons or modifier buttons (e.g., right trigger + X). Abilities needed to be simple and fast.

The "big fix" came when we decided to undo one of our assumptions. We moved the Leader Menu to the D-pad and put unit abilities on the Y button. Now we had something close to a primary and secondary attack with X and Y. Shooter fans "got" that. Awesome. Plus, it tested through the roof. The game instantly got more fun, and everyone was using abilities.

We did lose the "left stick plus button" thing. In hindsight, it would've been nice to save that, but players just don't use the Leader Menu as much as they use abilities. It made more logical sense to put the unit abilities on the Y button, even if that meant sacrificing one of our mantras. Plus, it was just a lot more fun.

No. 6 -- Why do Hunters come in pairs?

Any hardcore Halo fan will know that the Mgalekgolo are worm colonies that "bind" together to form what humans call Hunters. The Hunter lore is rich with details. The worm colonies originally begin as a single collected entity. When it grows too large, that colony divides into a pair of colonies. These colonies are deeply tied together as mates, or "bond brothers."

Halo Wars plays off of that lore with the Hunter upgrades. The most obvious upgrade would be to start with a single Hunter and then upgrade it so it splits into two Hunters. That wouldn't work in a strategy game, though, because it'd be too hard to tell what upgrade level an individual Hunter was when you encountered it. Is that single Hunter a low-level Hunter or a high-level Hunter whose mate's been killed? So, rather than go literal with the fiction, we tried to embody the spirit of the Hunter relationship. For example, one of the Hunter upgrades that you can research is called "Spirit Bond." When researched, this upgrade gives a huge combat bonus to your Hunters, but only if both Hunters are alive. When one Hunter falls, it becomes markedly easier to kill the remaining Hunter. This correlates very well with what players expect from the Halo shooters.

No. 7 -- 5,402 lines of battle chatter

If you've ever played Halo, you probably remember the Grunts -- they say some pretty funny things. As the series has evolved, players have realized how much chatter and conversation exists with any of the units or squads in the game. When we did some internal and external research, the sense of life and reality created by that chatter came back as one of the most important things in the Halo universe.

We wanted to knock that out of the park for Halo Wars. With our unit menagerie, we have tons of opportunities to dash off funny one-line quips or comments on the state of the battles. When the battle chatter system went in, our "Halo" feel really started to come together. A nice side effect was that it really improved the quality of the gameplay, too. The battle chatter is great for setting the mood or commenting on the environment, but it also notifies you about important things that are happening in the game.

A few examples of battle chatter in Halo Wars:

--"Aww, I've got Grunt bits all in the grill," usually said after you run over a few Grunts with Warthogs.
--"Grunt! Antifreeze, chair, now," might be heard by the Prophet leader if you're fighting over the Harvest polar regions.
--"Has anyone seen John?" and "That's Mjolnir Armor!" are good clues that Spartans have just entered the battle.

No. 8 -- Biggest comeback feature: Base Jumping

Skeptics wonder whether real-time strategy games can be fun on consoles. Obviously, Halo Wars is our response to that. The concern's still a fair one, though. People need to see the game work; they need to understand that we built the game for consoles. They need to have fun playing Halo Wars.

"Solving" the scrolling screen issue is a huge part of convincing people that they don't need a mouse to play a strategy game. Halo Wars has long had a feature called "Base Jumping." Press left on the D-pad, and we cycle you to your first base -- press left again, and it'll take you to your next base, and so on. This feature worked pretty well, but it was never something that the casual players used enough, which was a problem. We built the game expecting people to jump around the map rather than scrolling. Yeah, you can still scroll around if you want, but the game really is built for jumping around the map.

Base Jumping just wasn't cutting it, unfortunately... until we polished it. Sometimes, a little bit of polish makes all the difference. When you're Base Jumping, we flash the base's number in the middle of the crosshair. It's a little thing, but when you see the "1," you know you're at your first base. "2" means you're on your second base. You get the idea.

We don't just jump straight to the actual base. We jump in a little off to the side, and slide the camera over the base very quickly. The offset move's aligned so that the camera's "sliding in" from the spot on the map where you used to be looking. It's like a "fade in" for jumping. This really helped to orient players spatially on the map.

No. 9 -- Covenant Hot Dropping FTW!

A huge goal for this game was to have the UNSC and Covenant civilizations play very differently. The UNSC are the good guys, while the Covenant are definitely very, very evil. We could list out all the differences in how they play, but there's one feature that hasn't gotten a lot of attention: Covenant Hot Dropping.

Unlike the UNSC, the Covenant have their Leader (Prophet, Arbiter, etc.) on the battlefield. The three Covenant Leaders are actually the strongest individual units in the game -- it takes multiple Spartans to counter a Covenant Leader. Hot Dropping allows Covenant players to send any units directly to their Leader's location. Each Covenant base has a Gravity Lift right outside. Imagine there's a Covenant Spirit (the "tuning fork" equivalents of the UNSC Pelicans) parked just out of camera range: send a Grunt squad to that pad, and the Grunt gets that familiar blue glow as he's lifted up to the Spirit, and then instantly flown over to be dropped in next to your Covenant Leader.

Strategy fans can see the gameplay that comes out of this feature. The Covenant are really good at rushing (a quick attack before your opponent has defenses). The Leader can be maneuvered close to the enemy while the rest of the units are training back at the base. When the battle begins, you can start Hot-Dropping in your whole army. An additional twist is that the Covenant Leaders can be "recalled" back to a base via the Gravity Lift. The Covenant Leaders are very valuable, so the best players will rescue their Leaders right before death.

If Hot Dropping seems like a screw tactic, perfect -- it's supposed to feel that way. It's balanced out by other elements of the civilizations, of course, but it has that "evil" feeling we were after.

No. 10 -- Ensemble is very fashion-conscious

Well, sorta. We like stuff with our games on it. We've always had shirts and whatnot, but Halo Wars has inspired some of our best stuff. Three of my favorites: The Spirit of Fire T-shirt, the Halo Wars hoodie, and the Spirit of Fire hat. I'm still waiting for my Spartan boxers, though.