Halo Wars - interview

Right. So it looks beautiful, you've got the Halo license and it's on a console. Not that that's not enough, but what are the other major differentiations between this and other RTS games?

GD: That's a very valid question. There's a lot of variation in RTS, it's a huge genre by itself. The major problem I've always had with RTS games is I want you to look at the combat, I don't want you to play the base game and just make units to supply to the front line.

The combat is where the coolest special effects are. It's all about the combat; managing the combat, keeping the combat cool, being able to select the right units and do that right thing in combat. Making that the game seems to be the challenge to me, and doing it on a console was just a plus.

Traditionally you'd say console gamers are looking for more instantaneous action than PC gamers, which you wouldn't really associate the RTS genre with. Have you addressed the mindset of the console gamer versus the PC gamer?

GD: We think of ourselves as an "arcade RTS" or "action RTS." It's OK to have a super weapon fire and kill everything on screen. It's OK to have a scarab that can destroy everything. If you save up and you get that Scarab, go for it.

I feel that that's a good approach for the console, it really gets that console feel behind the game.

CR: We're excited to bring RTS to a console. So many people have an Xbox and have never played this type of game before, so we need to make sure that they get in the game and enjoy it.

We love this type of game. Every game has such a wonderful build up of tension where you're building up your base, then you're going out and fighting, making a decision and you're causing these things to happen.

That's awesome, not many games have that type of pacing. I feel that we're going to bring this genre to a new group of people, and that's pretty damn exciting.