Whatever Happened to Halo Wars? - Ultimate Guide

The roots of the strategy genre can be traced back as far as the early eighties, with games like Utopia (1981) and the British ZX Spectrum game Stonkers (1983). It’s fair to say that those early titles didn’t represent the modern genre very well, given the limited capabilities of the hardware of the time. So, strategy titles might as well be considered part of a 90s genre, despite that early start.

Following the subsequent success of franchises like Dune, Command & Conquer, Civilization, Warcraft, and StarCraft, arcade strategy died a rather infamous death towards the end of the 2000s, due in part to the actions of EA. The publisher had stripped out many of the mechanics that made Command & Conquer great by the fourth entry in the Tiberian saga (2010) and then, sadly, turned it into mobile-only IP during the mid-2010s.

Of course, by the time the most recent (and most disliked) installment of SimCity was released in 2012, it was just another tin can on the strategy trash pile.

Halo Wars

Let’s head back a few years, though, to 2009, and the one bright spark from that troubled era - Halo Wars. Created by Ensemble Studios, Halo Wars was the franchise’s first foray into the real-time strategy (RTS) genre. Its story centered on the ongoing feud between the United Nations Space Command and the Covenant, a multi-species union of aliens determined to destroy humanity.

Of course, as an RTS, it featured the standard god’s eye view of the battlefield, as well as other genre staples like leader units and resource collection. It was in an odd position regardless, something acknowledged by designer Graeme Devine. Strategy fans didn’t play Halo and Halo fans didn’t play strategy games. Making matters worse was that the original creator Bungie, Inc. didn’t want the license used in an RTS.

To this day, Ensemble-owner Microsoft favors a varied library when it comes to the kind of products that get released, so Halo Wars was going to happen whether Bungie liked it or not. Experimental real-time strategy games weren’t exactly unusual at the time. Command & Conquer: Renegade (2002) was a third-person shooter while both Civilization and Sins of a Solar Empire had been to space.

Historical Realism

Mercifully, Halo Wars did well and spawned a sequel - Halo Wars 2 - almost a decade later in 2017. Again, the game was well-received, perhaps because it was virtually the only example of an arcade-style RTS on the market at the time, with Command & Conquer still rotting in EA’s basement and the similar Planetary Annihilation seemingly abandoning itself in 2014.

With Creative Assembly’s Total War series doing so well, strategy had begun to lean more towards historical realism rather than the typical aliens and mad zealots. Having said that, the popularity of Total War: Warhammer suggests that the slightly silly nature of past RTS games could make a comeback in the future.

Halo Wars actually had a rather abrupt end. A pitch for the third game, which would have focused more on space battles, was rejected and this promising sub-franchise was canned. Unfortunately, that really is all there is to say about the demise of Halo Wars. As of the most recent update, in February 2021, Halo Wars 3 is still stuck on ice.