Design Computer game developer
Bungie conceived
Halo: Combat Evolved as a real-time strategy game in which players would tactically control units and vehicles in a three-dimensional environment. Microsoft acquired Bungie in 2000, and the game became a
first-person shooter and "
killer app" for the
Xbox console. Bungie produced two best-selling sequels,
Halo 2 in 2004 and
Halo 3 in 2007, before separating from Microsoft and becoming an independent company once more. Although Bungie is free to produce new intellectual property, the rights to
Halo remain with Microsoft. Shane Kim, the head of
Microsoft Game Studios, said during the split announcement that "our intent is to continue investing in [
Halo] and growing it." In 2004, the Microsoft-owned
Ensemble Studios—developers of the
Age of Empires strategy series—began work on the game that would become
Halo Wars. The studio confirmed in April 2006 that it was working on a console-based RTS. CEO
Tony Goodman said, "We're giving RTS games on the console a shot. We actually spent a whole year just trying to reconstruct how the controls would work on an RTS game." Without revealing the title, Goodman described the game as being shorter and more visceral than their previous projects.
Halo Wars was originally not a
Halo series title. Ensemble spent 12 to 18 months working on the control scheme, using the
Age of Mythology engine. The development team hacked an
Age of Mythology expansion,
The Titans, and used it as a prototype for control experiments. Senior designer Justin Rouse said that the team kept the controls from the research they had conducted, but scrapped the rest in favor of "build[ing] from the floor up what we need[ed]: the basics, the core of a strategy game." With the goal of making "the first great strategy game on the console", Bungie was reportedly not happy about this development. Ensemble's Founder, Tony Goodman, stated in a 2012 interview that Bungie saw the move as "the whoring out of our franchise" Although Ensemble had to re-create all of Bungie's assets from scratch, Bungie had produced a large amount of reference material for the
Halo film adaptation that the
Halo Wars team used for inspiration. Another reference point was art from the
Halo first-person shooters; however, as the art was from a forward perspective and
Halo Wars takes place from a
bird's-eye view, the team exaggerated shapes to make the units recognizable. Lead designer
Graeme Devine noted that the Warthog Jeep is "actually jumping three times as high as it does in
Halo, and it goes four times faster than it does in
Halo, and all these things—but it looks the same. Very different, between look and accuracy." Devine described the challenge of developing
Halo Wars as "getting
Halo fans to play a realtime strategy game, and getting realtime strategy fans to play a
Halo game." "Fans of the [first-person shooter] series have very strong expectations for how a
Halo games looks, feels and plays.
Halo is all about heroic action to save humanity, mega-battles across the galaxy, visceral, highly-tuned combat and heart-pounding tension," Pace said. These themes were considered fundamental to the
Halo experience, and so Ensemble tried to replicate them for
Halo Wars. Because of the
Master Chief's large role in previous games, significant effort was expended on the Spartan units. Lead designer
Dave Pottinger said the design team "started out just accepting and embracing the fact that the Spartans have to be the coolest unit in the game. If they're not, it's not going to meet the
Halo fans' expectations." The character design of the Spartans was meant to emphasize their relative inexperience and the setting of the game, which takes place decades before the events of the main trilogy. Devine commented on the Spartans' look: ... We felt because it was 20 years earlier, these are much younger Spartans. They aren't quite as experienced as Master Chief, and we looked a lot at combat infantry going into actual wars, and typically at the beginning of a war, especially the Vietnam War, if you look at the infantry, they're all loaded up. They have all the backpacks on, they have all the belts on, every single bit of armor is there, and they're carrying around lots of armor. At the end of the war, they've lost it all and just carry what they need. This is all they have. So if you look at our Spartans, they have more pieces of armor on going into the war. They have more markings on there, more pieces of armor. They've still got the belts on, they're still carrying around everything. Time constraints prevented many elements from appearing in the final game. One such missing feature was a fatality system by which Spartans or Covenant leaders could inflict massive damage on large groups of units. Pottinger said that the animations, while interesting, did not mesh with the fast-paced combat of
Halo Wars and raised balance concerns. Other elements based on
Halo fiction did not work in a strategy game. a Covenant campaign was never realized because of a lack of manpower and money. with a
pre-rendered trailer created by Blur Studio. The trailer depicts a group of Warthog vehicles searching for missing soldiers. Covenant
Elites ambush the patrol and a battle ensues involving human and Covenant vehicles and infantry. The trailer ends with the arrival of Spartan reinforcements.
GameSpy listed the trailer in its top 25 video game cinematic moments, because it showed "the world of
Halo on a much grander scale".
Halo Wars was exhibited at the
Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in 2007 and 2008. Devine narrated the soundtrack for a video shown at E3 2007, which was later made available on the
Xbox Live Marketplace. This video described the game's controls, user interface, vehicles, special weapons, and new units. It also showed a UNSC base consisting of an airbase, vehicle depot, missile silo, and other buildings.
IGN,
Next Generation, and
PC World ranked
Halo Wars as one of the most anticipated showings at E3. On September 10, 2008, Ensemble Studios announced that it would close after
Halo Wars completion. Ensemble founder Tony Goodman and other employees announced the formation of a new studio,
Robot Entertainment, shortly before the game's release; another group of ex-staff created
Bonfire Studios. Robot announced that, while developing new intellectual property, it would support
Halo Wars and
Age of Empires through a partnership with Microsoft Game Studios.
Audio Halo Wars music was composed by
Stephen Rippy, the composer for all of the
Age of Empires games. Rippy wanted to write new material while maintaining continuity by reusing iconic elements of the
Halo trilogy's music, written by
Martin O'Donnell and partner
Michael Salvatori. Consultation with O'Donnell and Salvatori finished before Rippy became involved in the project, but the composer sent a compact disc of his work to O'Donnell halfway through the writing process. Before starting work on
Halo Wars, Rippy listened to previous
Halo soundtracks and searched for useful material in discarded Ensemble projects; "I'm a big fan of both cataloging that stuff and stealing from it without remorse," Rippy said. "Sometimes you don't know what you've got until you really, really need it." Foregoing his usual method of writing melodies before determining the method of sound production, Rippy built melodies around synthesizer patches or drum loops. He felt that scoring for science fiction was a change of pace from his previous work, which was written for historical settings. "Some of the plot points of Halo Wars revolve around discovery, and I think that was my favorite idea to write to—that sense of, 'no one's seen this before,'" he said. Rippy's most intensive work period was January 2008, when he began writing music for the game's cinematics; by this point, he had been working on the score for nine months. and, after three months, all tracks were ready to be recorded. Although the previous live orchestrations for
Halo games were performed by the
Northwest Sinfonia in
Seattle, Washington, Rippy chose the FILMharmonic Orchestra of
Prague to record
Halo Wars music. Rippy had been in Prague attending recording sessions for
Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties and loved both the city and the sound the orchestra produced. The lower cost of recording in Eastern Europe was an additional benefit. The soundtrack was released on February 17 as a standalone compact disc and as a
digital download. ==Release==