Interview: Al Hope On Bringing Halo And RTS To New Players With Halo Wars 2

Much like dogs, years in video games don’t last as long as human years. In fact, since Halo Wars released on Xbox 360 in 2009, 28 years have passed for the crew of the Spirit of Fire. They haven’t aged a bit though, being nudged from their peaceful cryosleep with the galaxy a very different place to the one they knew.

Having played the game for a couple hours, sampling its single player and various multiplayer modes, we spoke to Creative Director Alistair Hope about what they’ve been trying to achieve with this long awaited sequel.


TSA: Coming to Halo Wars 2, it must have been an interesting one trying to pick up the work that had already been done by Ensemble Studios for the first game. Was there a different mentality from that, perhaps?

Alistair Hope: We were big fans of the first game and, you know, it was the best selling console RTS and I think it did a lot of things right. There were a lot of smart decisions there.

A sequel to Halo Wars has been the number one requested title by fans to 343 Industries for years…

TSA: They should just stop doing Halo 5 and 6, and just do Halo Wars games!

Al: [laughs] But I think people really wanted to pick up the story of Cutter and the Spirit of Fire. They wanted to see what happened next, I guess partly because it’s been a long time since that game came out.

So from our point of view, we wanted to make a sequel that was true to the original, but expand on it, tell its own story and make it something more contemporary. Also, I think our main goal was when combining strategy and this amazing Halo universe, to really take both Halo and strategy to a new audience. As a studio, we’ve been thinking about strategy and console for a long time, and it seemed like a really great fit.

I think it’s kind of well known that Halo started life as an RTS before becoming a first person shooter, so it’s kind of cool to think that Halo’s going back to its roots.

TSA: With the story, you’re doing something interesting by jumping it forward 28 years into the modern Halo time period, but why did you decide to do that instead of picking things up with the original time period? It almost feels like, that being the case, it almost doesn’t need to follow on from the first one.

Al: Yeah, but I think one of the cool things and the side effect of Cutter and his crew waking up 28 years later, is for the player who isn’t that familiar with Halo, just like Cutter and the crew, they won’t necessarily have all that backstory and knowledge of Halo. Just as the characters discover about the world around them, that new player to Halo also starts to learn, so I think there’s a nice parallel journey there.

So I think it’s cool that we’re bringing Halo Wars up to date. There’s some interesting things that we can do there.

TSA: Do you think that Cutter’s actually a bit of a bad captain? The first thing he does when he learns he’s horribly outmatched and directly up against the leader of this faction, is to give a rousing speech and just go for it!

Al: [chuckles] I think Cutter’s an interesting character. He refers to the Spirit of Fire as home, and for them, they come out of cryosleep and they have no idea why they’re there or what’s happening, and so he’s got this sense of defending all that he’s got, which is the Spirit of Fire.

TSA: The first game didn’t originally come to PC – though, it obviously has now – but Halo Wars 2 got to take PC gaming into account. Has that changed how you’ve thought about the gameplay? Or is the focus still making it for Xbox One and controller first?

Al: Not really. When we approached this game, we consciously wanted to make sure that whatever platform you played on, it was an intuitive and natural experience. Actually, the core experience is identical on both, we just took advantage of what each platform has to offer.

I like to think that if you’re familiar with playing with a controller, then Halo Wars 2 will actually feel very natural, and as you play on Xbox One that question starts to disappear a bit. Likewise, if you’re familiar with Real Time Strategy on PC and with mouse and keyboard, then I think it’s going to feel very natural and intuitive again. I think that in terms of controls, whatever platform people play on, they’ll feel at home.

TSA: Do you think some die hard strategy fans might dismiss it out of hand? It has been simplified to a certain degree and it’s more action focussed, as opposed to nitty gritty strategy.

Al: We did want to make a game that felt accessible, but accessibility doesn’t mean dumbing down. We wanted something that felt welcoming, but there’s a huge amount of depth to Halo Wars 2.

We have a huge variety of modes. We’ve got Strongholds, which is all out action and not about resource management, it’s just putting your favourite toys onto the battlefield and having a big smash, but then we’ve got Domination, which is much closer to a classic RTS and is about resource management, map control and dominating the field. Then we’ve got Deathmatch, the true test of RTS skill where all the brakes are off and is about long term strategy, understanding what your opponent is doing and countering that.

Then we’ve also got Blitz, which came out of that desire to make an RTS for everybody, by creating an experience that really streamlined some of the mechanics. It changes the emphasis away from base building and tech levels by translating units into cards and it takes away some of the moment to moment pressure of building an army by having the deck builder. It’s a mode that’s really easy to get into because the new player can just find the cards of their favourite units and build a deck, and then the experienced player starts to really understand how different combinations can unlock different ways to play. Combine that with teamplay, and you can start to create some really interesting decks!

TSA: I think that just trying to create Blitz in the first place is interesting, because you rarely see attempts to create new game modes for an RTS. Was taking that next step a driving force?

Al: I suppose in some ways, but it was mainly about different ways that we could approach Real Time Strategy. Just by changing a few things it can offer a different experience that’s engaging and fun.

TSA: Finally, what did you get to learn from the last beta test, and what are you looking for this time around?

Al: Yeah, that was great to get the game into people’s hands, and it’s always a really exciting aspect of development. I think the feedback from that was great, and we made some changes to some of the balancing and the camera. I’m looking forward to the Blitz beta, and really I can’t wait for that, because that’s the start of another dialogue and another conversation.

Once the game’s come out on Febraury 21st, we have a large amount of cool DLC planned post release, with new Blitz cards, new campaign missions, leaders and units. All of that feedback from the Blitz beta and the release can be part of the thinking for what’s next.


Thanks to Al for taking the time to chat to us. Be sure to check out our hands on with the game here, as well as a video preview. We’ll have some more in depth thoughts on Blitz next week once we’ve had some time with the beta which, incidentally, gets underway tomorrow, 20th January, on Xbox One and Windows 10!

Written by
I'm probably wearing toe shoes, and there's nothing you can do to stop me!

1 Comment

  1. Looks great, I do like a good RTS

Comments are now closed for this post.