For the strategy vets at Creative Assembly, 'Halo Wars 2' is a fresh challenge
The most exciting thing we know about Halo Wars 2 right now? The Creative Assembly is making it.
There are few development teams on the planet with more real-time strategy chops than Creative Assembly. You might know the studio best for its 2014 survival horror game Alien: Isolation, but this is also the team behind the long-running Total War strategy series.
Where Total War features a cast of thousands and an emphasis on historically authentic warfare, Halo Wars 2 pits the ragtag crew of a single battleship against an alien threat. With smaller armies and a "space marines vs. aliens" sci-fi bent, the new game feels about as far from Total War as you can get.
Why the big shift? After stepping away from strategy for Isolation, why would Creative Assembly return to the genre it knows so well with something so unlike Total War?
"We don't really work on titles that we don't feel passionate about; I think we're very fortunate in that regard," Creative Assembly creative director Alistair Hope told me. "So I think it depends greatly on the source material and what we're trying to achieve."
In the case of Halo Wars 2, the source material is easy. Halo is one of the most widely beloved franchises on the planet, with books, comics, and more supplementing the first-person shooter series of games. Creative Assembly is staffed by gamers, and there are lots of Halo fans among them.
There's still the other factor Hope pointed to: what the team is trying to achieve. In this case, it's pretty similar to what original Halo Wars developer (now defunct) Ensemble Studios set out to do.
"I think at the outset it was absolutely that we wanted to make an RTS where, whether you're a veteran RTS player with a lot of experience or [you're] completely new to the genre, you can find an experience that can feel really rewarding and satisfying," Hope said.
Ultimately, that's the appeal of Halo Wars. Strategy games have rarely worked well on consoles, but the original game -- released in 2009 -- was an exception. Ensemble came up with a way to manage and direct armies using an Xbox controller. It wasn't just functional; it was fun.
"I think that was a big starting point for us," Hope said. "Taking this amazing universe, looking at the original Halo Wars and what Ensemble had done, and building something that stayed true, in many ways, to the spirit of that first game."
There's an emphasis here on "starting point." Halo Wars 2 has grown beyond its predecessor in a number of ways. It's coming to Windows, for starters. It also introduces a new enemy faction in the Banished and a much deeper roster of tools for making war.
That last bit is where Creative Assembly's unique talents come into play most directly. "I think when we approach something like Halo Wars 2, we tap into ... one of the [core] aspects of the studio, which is authenticity and care and attention to the source material," Hope said.
In the historically-based Total War games, that sense of authenticity comes in the form of capturing things that really happened. With Alien: Isolation, it was more about tapping into nostalgia. Bringing people back to something they may have experienced more than 30 years ago.
This same line of thinking applies with Halo Wars 2.
"It's about story and characters, but it's also -- from a gameplay perspective -- about enabling the player to come up with the solution to the puzzle. Less prescriptive, more sandbox," Hope explained.
"[We want to] give the player the tools to do the job and then let them figure it out for themselves and have that satisfying 'battle as a puzzle' moment."
Ultimately, that's what Halo is at its heart. Wide-open battlefields, limited resources, odds stacked against you. You're just as much a tactician as you are a one-space-marine-army as you carve your own path to a given objective.
The story side of the game is where 343 Industries enters the picture. The Microsoft-owned studio took over as Halo gatekeeper after series creator Bungie reclaimed its independence.
Now, 343 works on all things Halo -- which means collaborating closely with Creative Assembly on Halo Wars 2. When the U.K. team comes up with cool gameplay ideas, they get with 343 to suss out how those new units and mechanics could serve the story.
"As the story developed, as the game modes developed, as there was a need to expand out the roster of units -- we have a lot more now than in the first game -- one of the things that was really critical was making all of that feel like it had always been there," 343 design director Clay Jensen said.
Halo Wars 2 picks up after the events of the first game, which ends with the crew of the UNSC warship "Spirit of Fire" going into cryosleep. When they awaken 28 years later -- shortly after the conclusion of Halo 5 -- they're far from home and completely out of the loop on current events.
Functionally, that means Spirit of Fire is acting alone, and with limited resources. The forces it can marshal for the ground operations in Halo Wars 2 are made up of whatever resources are close at hand.
"The final look and feel of [our new] units is based on what Spirit of Fire is capable of doing on their own ... with limited resources," Jensen said.
"Even down to the design of the bases, there's an element in there that helps tell the story. You can actually see that they are putting together this army with whatever they've got."
The game's story offers Halo newcomers an easy way in. Just like Captain James Cutter and his crew aboard the Spirit of Fire, series neophytes have no idea what's happened over the past 28 years.
"The game really puts you in the same shoes as Captain Cutter [and the Spirit of Fire crew]," Jensen said. "They don't know what has happened. So part of the process of [moving through the story] is for them to discover what they've missed."
If you're new to Halo with Halo Wars 2, their discoveries are also your discoveries. The game's story is designed to bring players up to speed, even as it introduces a new threat in Atriox, leader of the Banished (a Covenant remnant).
"The possibilities for future storytelling become even greater because we do have a fantastic new villain -- effectively -- in Atriox," Jensen added. "The Banished as a whole are really rich and deep. One thing that I think players are probably going to appreciate is that he's not a simple bad guy, and the Banished aren't a simple enemy."
That's where questions start to arise about the murky, post-Halo Wars 2 future for this series. Jensen points to parallels between the Spirit of Fire crew and the Banished -- they've both had their issues with the Covenant -- and suggests that this tension could inform future Halo stories.
"I'm really excited to see what sorts of things are going to be sparked in players' imaginations," he said. "I can tell you that that's something we're very excited about as well. So I hope that we'll be able to tell more of that story and combine those things in the future."
Halo Wars 2 launches for Xbox One and Windows 10 on Feb. 21.
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
