Recently I was invited by the lovely folks over at Microsoft Australia to get a hands-on with their upcoming exclusive, Halo Wars 2. To put this into perspective, the original Halo Wars was one of my favourite games from the previous generation. The simplicity in its design made it a very accessible game for anyone who might be intimidated by the depth that most RTS games hold, plus it didn’t control like a garbage fire despite the limitations of a controller compared to keyboard and mouse. This is not to mention it’s in the Halo universe which is also one of my favourites (I grew up with the series). It was, and still is, one of the few RTS games that I could get my head around and I enjoyed every minute of it. I was also given the chance to interview 343 Industries’ Design Director, Clay Jensen. Before anything else happens, I do have to thank Microsoft Australia for inviting me out to play a title that I’m dying to get my hands on and a huge thanks to Clay for flying all the way out here from Seattle to talk with us!
Hands-on Preview
What can I say aside from “wow”? Having never played Halo Wars 2 before (I missed out on the beta that occurred right after E3 last year), the game felt very much like the original in the best ways. It offered that simple, intuitive design that the original was known for. I picked up the controller and everything felt pretty much the same in terms of controls, aside from some minor tweaks and changes. I played a mission which has never been seen before and it felt like a new adaptation, with new writing, some new characters, new units and new mechanics. The resource system hasn’t been changed very much, except that now instead of reactors contributing to your tech level, they give you power. Power is needed for upgrades and some units require power to be built too. Supply pads and resource hubs still work the same, as do most of the buildings which can be contracted in your bases. There is a new Ultimate Unit (I imagine this is the new name for Uber Units) for the humans called the Condor. The thing was a mighty beast, and I decided to spawn two of them when we played a multiplayer match and I could hear my opponents getting frustrated with them. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to get a look at the new Scarab, but from what I’ve heard it looks insane.
Rare image of the Jedi attacking Emperor Palpatine.
Speaking of multiplayer, there is a new game mode called Blitz. This game mode plays incredibly differently to regular Team Deathmatch. Instead of focusing on the long battle, the game only last for 15 minutes. It’s essentially King of the Hill except there are three hills and the first to 200 points wins. However, this isn’t the only thing that is different in Blitz. Instead of building bases, the game instead plays like a card game, imagine Gwent except you can control the units that are played on field. Instead of building supply pads and reactors for resources, you have a blanket resource counter which constantly goes up. The only way to get more resources is by scavenging purple supply drops which not only give you instant resource gains, but also increase the rate at which resources are automatically replenished. While I actually sucked at the game mode (I prefer a more passive style of play) this game is a very good way to get into the rest of the game and is cleverly devised. It can provide an easy way to experiment and learn how different units interact with one another too. Luckily for you, there is an open beta for Blitz coming January 20th if you want a taste before full release. For anyone one Xbox One and Windows 10 PC, I would highly recommend trying out the beta. Who knows? You might find you enjoy the game enough to pick it up on its release date of February 21 (Feb 17 for those who preorder the Ultimate Editions).
Clay Jensen Interview
Following my time playing the preview build of Halo Wars 2, I had the opportunity to interview the lovely and enthusiastic Clay Jensen, Design Director at 343 Industries (hereby referred to a 343i). Once again, a big thank you goes out to Microsoft Australia and Clay Jensen for this incredible opportunity, you guys are the bomb!
DYEGB: Who are you and what role do you have in the development of Halo Wars 2?
Jensen: My name is Clay Jensen and I’m the Design Director at 343i on Halo Wars 2.
DYEGB: How long have you been a part of 343i’s development staff?
Jensen: I have been at 343i since 2014, so right from the beginning of the project and joined specifically to do this project.
DYEGB: This is more a question for me. Being a huge fan of the original Halo Wars, are any members from Ensemble Studios (the original creators of Halo Wars) a part of Creative Assembly who are making Halo Wars 2?
Only one rainbow?
Jensen: Not that I’m aware of, many of the team at 343i have been there a long time and worked on many of the previous Halo titles, but I don’t know if there is anyone at Creative Assembly that is actually from the original Ensemble team.
DYEGB: Well here’s to hoping there are because that would be awesome and the original was awesome.
Jensen: What I will tell you is that there is a huge amount of people on both sides of the studios (343i and Creative Assembly) that are avid fans of the first game. That’s something that was there right from the beginning, there was a great reverence for the original game. Halo Wars 2 has been the most requested game that we have had at 343i since the original came out. We have wanted to do it for ages. There are loads of people who wanted to do this game, similarly at Creative Assembly there has been a huge desire from a number of really dedicated fans. If there was ever a group of people that it was in good hands in terms of wanting to do a really kick ass sequel, this is definitely the group.
DYEGB: That’s great to hear! I actually got the original as a birthday present and I looked at it and thought ‘Ugh an RTS? I don’t want to play that!’ I decided to give it a spin and then 200 or so hours later I realised I loved the game.
Jensen: That’s an experience that a lot of players have had. The original Halo Wars was pretty revolutionary for bringing RTS to a console and ended up being the best-selling RTS ever on a console but I think it was also the first RTS that a lot of people played. There were a lot of people who were thinking they wouldn’t like it but decided to give it a go because it was Halo, then they got into the story and pretty soon they found themselves being able to really play it. That’s something that we’ve really tried to embrace with Halo Wars 2 as well is how do make something that is really satisfying, exciting, deep and challenging for the original fans but then also realise that there is going to be a load of people who have never played RTS or don’t really think they like strategy games who are hoping to give it a shot because it’s a very quick and accessible to kind of get into that game and discover that actually, not only is it a lot of fun but you can actually get quite good at it faster than you think. It’s not as intimidating as it may seem.
DYEGB: That’s something that I loved about the original Halo Wars. It’s an RTS, but the simplicity of its design made it very accessible for everyone. I noticed in my time playing Halo Wars 2 you’ve added depth and variety too it, but you also managed to maintain that iconic simplicity that the original was known for. How on Earth did you manage that?
Jensen: Yeah that was a very conscious effort and while it’s not always the most appealing thing to say or think ‘oh let’s try and keep everything the same as we could’ but actually, there were elements in the original game that fans really, really loved and we did not want to mess that up. I mean, you always, always, want to add tons of new stuff. New units, new leaders, we’ve got new modes. There are a lot of new things going on in the game but a very conscious design choice right from the beginning was as we are adding those new things we needed to make sure that those original foundations were still there, that it still feels like Halo Wars. That it hasn’t just become something else entirely every single time we looked at adding a new mode or changing things up, all of those decisions were looked at through that lens of, ‘Ok, not only is that making it a better game overall but is it getting in the way of stuff that is already great?’ It’s very, very easy to add tons of new features. In fact, in Halo Wars 2 one of the challenges we had was trying to keep the control scheme as intuitive as it had been in the first game and still add twice as many features to it with the same number of buttons so that was something that we really had to tread very carefully with. As we were adding things, looking at that and saying is it going to get in the way and messing up what was already a really good experience. So hopefully we have struck a balance between lots of cool and new stuff but anybody who played the original game hopefully should pick up Halo Wars 2 and think, ‘It actually feels like what I remember’.
DYEGB: I’m sure you would’ve realised you achieved that when you walked over towards me and tried to explain to me about the building upgrade system only to realise I had already done that haha.
Jensen: Exactly, yeah! I was thinking “oh that’s funny, you’ve already figured it out”, so that’s a great example!
Feel my waser wifle!
DYEGB: Well speaking of trying to keep it as close the original as possible, I noticed the art style of Halo Wars 2 in many ways pays respects, if not mirrors, the art style of not only the original Halo Wars, but also the original Bungie games while also adding a dark, gritty twist to it. What prompted this move with you guys?
Jensen: It kind of goes back to what we were just talking about which is wanting to try keep to it because it’s been such a while since the first one came out. In fact, that was an art style that people really loved, we at 343i really loved that art style too and Creative Assembly was very much on board with that kind of take on the world. But also wanting to try and tie it into the original game especially with the definitive edition of Halo Wars which is available now in a much more beautiful, higher res version. There is going to be a lot of players that are actually going back and playing the original for the first time while also having the older fans go back and play it again.
“…And we’ll throw some explosions there.” – Michael Bay
That was a very conscious choice to make sure that those two experiences, even though it’s been a long time, feel like a continuation, that there is a certain personality to the world, there’s a certain look to it. But what you also picked out which I’m really happy about is the fact that it does have a kind of grittiness to it. Especially as you get into some of the campaign and you dive back into the new cinematics, it is a darker, more realistic, more kind of haunting Halo which kind of harkens back to the earlier look and feel. That art style was very deliberate in that respect. We kind of tried to make it embrace what was done in the first game, while also adding more realism, more depth and make it more dramatic. There are places in the campaign which really are spectacular in terms of the vista. I mean The Ark itself gives us almost unlimited possibilities in terms of the kinds of spaces that we can create.
DYEGB: Well it definitely shows without feeling foreign. Speaking of cinematics, I noticed that some of the character models are quite different in comparison to the originals. I understand that the technology you are using is very different, but what made you guys decided to change the character models like with Anders and Cutter?
Jensen: It’s a very simple answer actually. In Halo Wars 2 they’re real actors. In the original Halo Wars all the cutscenes and character models were computer generated and not based on any particular prototype. In Halo Wars 2, all of the people that are in our cinematics are based on real actors so we needed to really embrace the fact that these are the actors that are embodying these characters. I know that was a little bit of a surprise when people first caught a glimpse of Captain Cutter and thought, ‘Wow that’s amazing, cryo sleep does wonders for your skin! He hasn’t looked that good in years’. That really was it, it wasn’t anything more complex other than we do have real actors now in those roles so obviously we needed to kind of embrace that.
DYEGB: Well that’s quite interesting to know haha.
Jensen: Haha well Atriox is real, for example. Getting him into a mo-cap suit though, I tell you, is really tricky haha.
DYEGB: I don’t even want to begin to imagine that haha. Well, I noticed that Isabel, the new AI, is sitting in place of Serena, the original AI at the Spirit of Fire. Is this a way to sort of tie in to the fact that AIs deteriorate after 7 years of being active?
Jensen: I can’t comment on what may happen at the beginning of the campaign. But, Isabel is a really interesting new character and a really great addition to the overall Halo universe. AIs have had a very special place in Halo lore for a long time, so it’s not very often that you are confronted with an opportunity to introduce a new one, let alone one that is as intelligent and interesting and complex as Isabel. One of the things that I think is going to be really surprising and interesting for players, especially when they dive in to the campaign, is learning about her backstory and who she is. Seeing her personality, she is very, very capable but is also very approachable. It sounds funny to say ‘she’s very human’, but that’s the case. I’m really looking forward to people getting to experience the story in the game and then potentially in the future. Now that our storylines are kind of coming together, I really look forward to her *hopefully* taking on bigger roles in the future because I think she really is a fantastic character.
Bringing the term ‘ranga’ to a whole new level.
DYEGB: From what I saw, she was done very well. In terms of her visual design, while she still is holographically projected due to her being an AI, she still feels human.
Jensen: Yes! That’s something that comes across very much in the campaign. I mean, her story is very much an integral part of the whole campaign story arc and really that’s one of the worst things about doing development on this game is that you just want to be able to tell everybody what’s going on haha. But from the little bits that have already been able to see, people have really gotten a taste of who she is and what her personality is like and the fact that she is a very strong character. She really is very intelligent and very cunning, but doesn’t give up. She has a lot of fight in her and is in a situation that seems impossible at the beginning.
DYEGB: Well she does seem very resilient and very playful in the way her character is designed. Has the success of Halo 4 and Halo 5 had any influence on the way that the development cycle for Halo Wars 2 has been processed?
Jensen: That’s a great question. I don’t know, I don’t perceive there being a difference. One thing that has been great about Halo Wars 2 is that right from the beginning, it was its own independent project. Getting the amount of time we needed, getting the development cycle that we really needed to step back and really make it feel like its own kind of standalone title, has been fantastic. If anything, it’s just upped the pressure because with all of the popularity of Halo 4 and 5, the fan base and the interest in, especially, another Halo Wars game continued to go up and up and up. One of the toughest things for me in the early stages of the game was not being able to tell anyone that it was coming.
DYEGB: Oh I can imagine.
Jensen: Yeah, we’re online and looking at everyone’s comments and petitions are coming in and people are signing things and saying, ‘Please do another Halo Wars game!’ So it was very, very tough not being able to tell anyone that was happening. Once we did though, the amount of responses we got from fans and excitement that’s built up has been great, equally in the studio. There are people on the core Halo team that are every amount as excited to play it as everyone else is and have been. I would say that it really has had the luxury of being its own title. That was something that I think was fantastic about the first game. I think that’s why Halo Wars is kind of its own little niche in the Halo universe. But like I said, now that the stories are kind of coming together, there are certainly great opportunities to kind of cross-pollenate and have those two stories kind of develop in parallel together.
Guys, don’t interrupt the siesta.
DYEGB: With the way 343i has handled DLC in Halo 5, they would provide free content through regular updates. Will there be anything like that in the foreseeable future for Halo Wars 2?
Jensen: So there is some great stuff coming, we have six-plus months of great DLC content and I can’t go into a ton of detail other than to say if you were thinking about getting the season pass it’s going to definitely be worth it. There’s a lot of great stuff – new leaders, new units, new Blitz cards, a bunch of other stuff that is going to add a lot of depth to the game and it is very actively being supported, while also really being supported from the perspective of fans.
We did a beta last year for the multiplayer and now we have a Blitz beta coming up, starting on the 20th of this month, so very soon. We’re really encouraging players to get in and try Blitz, to test it out and to also give us feedback by going on Waypoint or posting on other forums. Even though we’re not always obvious, we are watching what everybody is saying, really trying to listen. Even now there will be tuning adjustments and things going forward, so it’s very much an ongoing effort, once it gets out to the wild, to keep working on it with the players.
DYEGB: Has there been much of a challenge in terms of balancing and making sure nothing is ridiculously overpowered, because you have your ultimate units like the Condor and the Scarab, and in the original the Scarab was kind of ludicrously overpowered haha. With the balancing of that as well, has community feedback helped with that at all?
Jensen: Absolutely! The beta last year provided us with a huge amount of feedback. We’ve obviously been doing a load of internal testing ever since last year and very regularly testing and tuning during the whole course of the project. Right from the beginning, in terms of when new units are being developed, how those are going to fit in to the different modes, how those are going to play well with the leaders we have. There have been many, many iterations of tuning and balancing changes already. Certainly a lot of them came after the beta. We received a really huge amount of valuable data, but also a lot of anecdotal feedback with people posting on Waypoint and different forums which alerted us to potential strategies that needed to get a little bit of an adjustment. But as I said, that’s very much an ongoing effort so if people are jumping into the beta to play Blitz in the coming week that gives us a huge amount of data and information and again posting their thoughts online is something we do pay attention to. So that is going to be an ongoing effort to keep adjusting and keep balancing. I feel like right now it is very balanced, it’s really in a good place, but with any sort of strategy game, there’s always room.
DYEGB: Yeah there’s always a way to break it haha.
Jensen: Exactly! Part of the challenge of RTS in the first place is to try to find those solutions. So as people do, we can adjust it and keep it under control.
Well, Michael Bay has been through here…
DYEGB: Well this will be the first Halo Wars title that is available on the PC as well as the Xbox One home console. Has there been much of a challenge developing it and making sure it runs well on both systems?
Jensen: Absolutely. We’re really, really excited to be bringing Halo Wars 2 onto Windows 10. That’s, again, something that we have really wanted to do for a long time.
DYEGB: Of course! It’s an RTS, it belongs on PC haha.
Jensen: Exactly, it has to be on PC! That’s something that has worked out really, really well. The experience is very similar on both platforms, so no matter what platform you play on, it feels the same. But on PC it really does take advantage of keyboard and mouse controls, additional controls, the ability to remap, you know all of the things you expect when playing a PC RTS. I think it feels very natural and very native on the PC. With that being said, I don’t think you really lose anything when you jump to console. In fact, because we were talking about the control scheme earlier, a real testament to that is a number of PC players that I’ve seen will actually attach their controller and play with their controller on PC or they’ll go back and forth. It definitely feels like a very solid experience on both platforms. Players on PC can also take advantage of 4K resolution, which I can tell you looks amazing.
DYEGB: Oh man I need to build a PC now haha. Well on the topic of 4K resolution, this is way down the line: Will Halo Wars 2 support 4K resolution for the Scorpio?
Jensen: I can’t get into any real details on that yet haha. But obviously we are going to take full advantage of that platform and then going forward we always, ALWAYS want to do as much as we can. We’re always looking to see how we can push things. We’d have to wait and see, but certainly that would be a desire, yeah.
DYEGB: Fair enough. Well when I was playing on Xbox One I noticed there were pretty much no frame drops at all. Has there been much of an emphasis on ensuring the frames remain stable?
Jensen: Absolutely, yeah! I mean, with a game like Halo Wars 2, one of the biggest challenges that we’ve got is that we constantly want to do more and more and more and make it look better and better and better and that is obviously the enemy of frame rates. So there have been some very deliberate choices to get that down and to keep it down and running at a really nice and stable way and as you say, playing it now, it’s very fluid and it looks great. I think that’s been a really nice balance of trying to split between performance and just the visual impact of the game overall.
Keep the flames on during the winter.
DYEGB: Well obviously the build we played was a preview build, so it’s probably not finished in its entirety. So what about polish, in terms of bugs and errors that you always get in code: How has managing all that been?
Jensen: That’s always a challenge, I think it went very, very smoothly actually. That goes back to there’s always things that you want to keep polishing on. That’s been the challenge too, just to keep things and keep polishing things and keep making it just that much better, all the way to the end but I would say that, overall, the process there has been very smooth. The philosophy around the development of the game all along I think has kind of let us get to that place where it’s very solid.
DYEGB: Well aside from when my teammate was disconnected, I didn’t notice anything wrong. Well here’s a bit of an unrelated question: Approximately how much storage space will Halo Wars 2 take up on the Xbox One?
Jensen: Off the top of my head, I don’t know hahaha. I’m probably the wrong person to ask.
DYEGB: Well that is about all I have to ask you today haha. Thank you for flying down here and allowing us to play Halo Wars 2 and talk to you about it.
Jensen: Well it was great meeting you! Thank you very much for coming in and playing. If you get a chance to play a little bit of Blitz, that’d be awesome!
DYEGB: From what I played, Blitz was a bit of a rude awakening for me haha! Once again, thanks for coming down and I wish you a safe journey back home!
Overall, the experience was fantastic. Clay appears truly passionate and enthusiastic about Halo Wars 2, which was a good thing to see and hear. From our time talking, it was very clear that the folks over at 343i and Creative Assembly have taken great care with the Halo Wars IP and made sure that they deliver the best experience possible. Once again, I highly recommend trying out the Blitz beta which launches on January 20.
Here are a couple extra images to feast your eyes on
