Age of Ensemble, Part 3: The Closing Chapters
12/18/2008 7:34 PM | 9 Comments | Page 3 of 5
Somebody else's toys
In September 2006, Microsoft announced that its prize RTS developer would be making an RTS based on its prize intellectual property -- the Halo universe. The conversion of a first-person shooter to a strategy game for the Xbox 360 would be a challenge for everyone. Real-time strategy games have never been comfortable in the console environment, and the legions of Halo fans are immersed in a diet of games, novels and action figures. "It's almost Star Wars for this generation," says Pottinger, now the lead designer on
Halo Wars.
Drawing on his own experience making the
Asian Dynasties expansion for
Age of Empires III, Brian Reynolds of Big Huge Games is cautious about working in someone else's playground.
This concept art probably means something to Halo fans.
"Working with an existing IP that someone else created has its own unique set of challenges -- you need to create something 'new and exciting' for players while staying true to what made the original game great. The most important thing to do is identify the central features of the original franchise that attracted players, and keep almost all of those things intact."
"
Halo Wars is a boiled-down strategy game," Pottinger warns. "It's a 15-minute console adrenaline fest with lots of explosions. But I think it has reinvigorated the team quite a bit. You get a little tired of working on the same PC game, where you get into battles over which features to put in. It was great to think about making a game that is so different."
There are, to be expected, lots of challenges in working with someone else's universe. Your typical Ensemble game draws on Encyclopedia Britannica -- general knowledge in the public domain that can be turned into something mechanical. The Halo world presents difficulties that cannot be resolved by taking out the Italians and Swedes, two nations culled from
Age of Empires III.
"It's a very tough road to walk," says Shelley. "You have to make some tradeoffs between consoles and your typical RTS. You have to simplify the economy, make the action faster; there is no micromanagement."
This concept piece approximates what you'll have as a base. It will be smaller.
"If you come to
Halo Wars looking for the Age experience, well, it's not that. It's more about combat," says Pottinger. "People who were good at our previous games may not be successful here. Even in our development team, there has been a definite shift in who's good at this game versus who was good at the earlier games. It doesn't apologize for being simple."
As one of the premier real-time strategy developers, Ensemble is well aware of the difficulties other companies have faced in translating the genre for a console controller and television. They point to first-person shooters as an example of how a genre can work just as well on the console, provided the game is built with that platform in mind.
Rich and varied worlds have always been a part of the Ensemble RTS philosophy.
Part of the challenge, says Pottinger, is the size of the audience. "Holy crap. There are a lot of people who love Halo. It reminds you of how jaded you can get working on someone else's IP. It's cool to work on a game that is going to get more public attention than the Age games. They were never quite as cool.
