| airraid.mach2.5@gmail.com 2006-09-27, 7:59 pm |
| Bungie's X06 Announcements
Posted by KPaul at 9/27/2006 10:32 AM PDT
Hella Halo Bombshells at X06
Brian and Frankie are here in Barcelona at X06 for what we've hinted
several times would be a Halo 3 no-show. But we also dropped a hint or
two that something would be happening, and that's certainly true. By
now you may have read elsewhere that two new Halo game projects have
been announced - the Halo Wars real time strategy game from Ensemble
and the as-yet unrevealed Halo project to be made in partnership with
Lord of the Rings and King Kong director, Peter Jackson. Both projects
are for Xbox 360.
Deep breath now. Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, who we're also working
with on the Halo movie, have formed Wingnut Interactive, a video game
studio that will capitalize on Peter and Fran's creative vision,
while using the expertise, infrastructure and experience of Microsoft
Game Studios and Bungie Studios to get the show on the road.
It's a partnership we've been very excited about for a long time,
and one that gives us great pleasure (and no small measure of relief)
to announce.
Peter Jackson himself kind of sums up our feelings about the venture,
saying, ""Working directly with the Bungie guys to help carve out and
reimagine another piece of the Halo game universe is a dream come true.
Combining the creative and technical talents of Bungie Studios with the
fire and passion of Wingnut Interactive just seems like a great recipe
for success and the perfect way to start a new kind of partnership in
the video game world. I can't wait."
Wingnut Interactive will be working closely with us to create
"another chapter in the Halo universe," which is a phrase you'll
be hearing a lot and of course, we're sworn to secrecy.
This raises as many questions as it answers - will it be a sequel? A
prequel? A side-story? We won't squeal, but we can tell you it will
be a blend of gameplay and storytelling quite unlike anything the games
industry has ever seen before. And Wingnut Interactive isn't stopping
at Halo - the newly formed gaming behemoth will also be working
closely with Microsoft to introduce a brand-new gaming IP created by
Wingnut themselves.
Gasp! Does this mean Bungie is distracted from Halo 3? No. In fact the
Bungie team, now bigger and better than ever, thunders on down the road
to completing Halo 3 and will simply not deviate from that path. A few
select team members have been chosen to liaise and interface with
Wingnut Interactive and in fact, the sharing of ideas and technology
with Wingnut Interactive and to some extent, WETA Digital, will likely
bring creative benefits to Bungie as we complete our scheduled march to
finish and release Halo 3 in 2007. Thanks to careful planning and good
use of resources, these new projects have added not one single day to
our schedule.
YET MORE HALO ON THE HORIZON
As if the Peter Jackson partnership wasn't cool enough for Halo fans,
there's more to be excited about in the form of the just announced Halo
RTS game being developed by Ensemble Studios. "Halo Wars" is a brand
new saga in the Halo Universe that explores the time of first contact
between the UNSC and Covenant Forces. If you've ever wondered what it
would be like to control dozens of Warthogs and Scorpion tanks instead
of just a single vehicle, your time has finally come.
http://www.bungie.net/images/news/i...es/halowars.jpg
Ensemble Studios has a rich heritage and expertise in the
real-time-strategy genre through their extremely successful Age of
Empires franchises on the PC. This latest endeavor has been designed
from the ground up as an Xbox 360 title, with controls and interface
specifically tuned for the needs of a console. The folks at Ensemble
are the only team we trusted to make a Halo RTS and from what we've
already seen (and played), it's going to be awesome. And yes, the
controls do work great on a 360 pad.
Bungie has been working with Ensemble primarily in the area of the
game's fiction to help inspire the story and ensure continuity with the
existing Halo Universe. Aside from that, Ensemble is applying their
skills to deliver a great Halo experience in a whole new genre, which
is ironically where Halo began in the first place. If you've seen some
of the very early Halo videos out there, you might recall that before
it ever became an FPS, it was in fact designed as an RTS (building off
of Bungie's experience with the Myth franchise). Now, many years later,
Ensemble is able to take the franchise full circle and bring it back to
the place where it all began.
Ensemble brought their prototype to Bungie quite a while back, to show
the guys that an RTS could not only work on the 360, but kick XXX too.
Frankly, Ensemble is one of very few folks on Earth that we would trust
with our baby, and that trust is doubled thanks to the excellence of
the Age of Empires franchise.
Ensemble's own Chris Rippy said, "The Halo Wars team is made up of
a bunch of guys that are all very passionate Halo fans. When we sat
down to start thinking about our next project, we thought bringing the
Halo universe into the RTS world would be a perfect a fit, and would
make an amazing game. We couldn't be more excited about Halo Wars, and
can't wait for everyone to try it out!"
Naturally you've got a million questions and unfortunately, as is
usually the case with anything Halo-related, we don't really have many
answers just yet. As we continue to see early builds and get hands on
time with the game we'll pass our impressions on to you through our
weekly updates but for the most part you should head over to the
Ensemble site - www.halowars.com - for the latest news and updates on
Halo Wars. In addition to a FAQ and forum, you'll be able to check out
various game assets inclduing the CG announcement trailer that was
shown to the press at X06. A web version should be up on their site
soon in addition to an HD version hitting Xbox Live Marketplace.
With Halo 3 approaching steadily and a ton of cool stuff on the
horizon, it's a great time to be a Halo fan and we can't wait to share
in all the fun and excitement the future entails. Stay tuned for more
details on both announcements and even some surprises for the next
Bungie Podcast.
Is it too much Halo? No. Believe us when we tell you that these
projects will be spaced out sensibly and in fact, we're sure you'll
be -blam!-ing soon enough that there's too large a gap between them,
but more importantly, we here at Bungie, our friends at Ensemble and
our new partners Wingnut Interactive are doing everything in our care
to ensure that Halo 3, Halo Wars and the unnamed Halo project live up
to the promise and heritage of the universe we all love so much. It's
going to be incredible. We promise.
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