While I don't think there's enough actual content in the Halo Wars trailer to do a full-on annotation, as for the Halo 3 trailer, I did think it worthwhile to try and collect some thoughts about yesterday's announcements that will be worth pondering in the time between now and when we actually see these new games. Some are picayune details, and some are big questions. First, the picayune details.

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Pre-Rendered

We've been spoiled since 1999 or so, since Bungie has overwhelmingly opted to produce its trailers and cinematics using the same engine that powers their game. Sure, it didn't always look just like the final product, and it wasn't always used in real time. But you always knew, looking at cinematics from Halo or Halo 2, that the Halo engine was in there doing the heavy lifting. Even the Halo 2 theatrical trailer of prodigious resolution was rendered by the game engine, although not in real time.

The Halo Wars trailer is quite obviously not rendered in any kind of game engine. Nor, does it seem, is it even supposed to indicate what gameplay will look like. It seems intended to give flavor of the kind of action that will take place in the game-- which is to say, conflict between UNSC and Covenant forces closer to the beginning of hostilities between the two than to the events of Halo and Halo 2.

Of course, being an RTS game, whatever engine Halo Wars is using probably simply isn't geared to make cinematic-quality material, so it is perhaps understandable that Ensemble will go all-out and just make a CG film designed to give you an idea of what playing Halo Wars will be like.

Mark IV My Words

To me, at least, the beefier-looking "Omega Group" Spartans that close out the Halo Wars trailer are supposed to be Mk IV Mjolnir suits, rather than the slender, more effeminate Mk VI suit sported by the Master Chief in Halo 2, or the Mk V suit worn in Halo 1. That's consistent with the timeline of the first two games, if we believe that the Mk IV suit was developed and deployed sometime between before Halo 1, and the Mk VI suit was experimental at the start of Halo 2.

At Least Halo Wars Has BR Start

Of course, detail-oriented fans everywhere are already wondering why, if the Spartans pictured in the trailer are older models, why UNSC forces seem to be carrying Battle Rifles that appear only in Halo 2. The answer to this, of course, is that it's only a game. The development and evolution of weaponry in a game doesn't follow the same pattern as the real-world. If it did, people would be screaming for their pistol back. Oh, wait... they are. Nevermind. Needless to say, just because we didn't see a BR in Halo 1 didn't mean they didn't exist in the Halo universe. There may have been some other explanation. Either that, or perhaps the inclusion of the BR in the trailer is an oversight that will be corrected. Either way it's probably not a big deal.

Wanna Fight?

Halo cinematics have had their share of corny lines, but on the whole, far fewer than most other games. Myself, I was just watching the Lost World trailer the other day and found myself wincing and wondering who wrote crap like that. The dialogue is positively painful.

Of course, Ensemble isn't Bungie. We shouldn't expect them to be, and they shouldn't try to be. They've got their own thing, it's just that now their own thing is overlapping Bungie's Halo universe.

The Halo Wars trailer reminds me more of the Lost World trailer than it does any Halo cinematic ever produced by Bungie. Despite a few clunkers like "this cave is not a natural formation" and lines that seem a little bit cheesy, like "sir, finishing this fight", there's nothing that's come out of Bungie since 1999 that falls as flat as "if they want war, we'll give them war."

This is probably beside the point, though. I don't think anyone should expect an RTS game to be providing the kind of cinematic experience that Halo 1 and Halo 2 do; or like the experience Peter Jackson talked about at X06. The future of the story-driven portions of the Halo universe clearly lies in the hands of his new venture, Wingnut Interactive.

Business Case

At the end of the day, X06 may be marking a passing of the torch as far as the Halo universe is concerned. Since Halo 2 shipped there have been mixed signals as to whether or not Bungie wanted to continue to make Halo games as long as people would buy them, or whether they wanted to move on to doing something else. It's a natural thing to happen. Id Software underwent serious controversy internally because of that precise question: when is it time to revisit a beloved property, and when is it time to do something completely different? (Or, in the case of Id Software, revisit another, older property.)

Phoenix was begun and then abandoned because it didn't work out. Reports have been made earlier this year of a team within Bungie working on a non-Halo game. And now we have at least two new Halo games announced, seemingly both being led by developers that are not Bungie-- Ensemble Studios in the case of Halo Wars and Wingnut Interactive in the case of the new "series" of Halo games.

That Microsoft would not want a popular intellectual property to languish simply because Bungie wanted to work on something new is, I suppose, understandable. Therefore if Bungie would not be willing to dedicate themselves entirely to the production of the Halo franchise until fatigue finally kills it, then the only solution is to hand it off to other developers. That, I submit, is what we have just witnessed.

Bungie will no doubt maintain a role in the production of Halo games that it does not develop, and that is only right. However, I find the most exciting idea that came out of X06 yesterday not the idea that other studios are getting into the business of making Halo games, but that doing so allows Bungie to get out of the business of making Halo games, and back into the business of what they do best-- doing something new.