Rampancy

Ahead of NPD data, Microsoft is claiming that Halo 3 has sold over 8 million copies so far worldwide, and the 360 console 17.7 million, according to GameDaily.

Rampancy.net reader and games programmer OldNick (MobyGames profile) expands on some complaints observations made about Halo 3's NPC behaviors during the last podcast episode; namely, that sometimes getting marines to do what you want (or even what seems reasonable) seems unreasonably hard:

Having started with a random male-marine voicing, when he finally succeeds in reaching his scripted destination and dismounts, he switches to the Australian marine voice... and stands there like an idiot yelling about the urgency of the situation and the need to do something about it quickly - rather than doing something constructive like manning the Gauss gun and taking out the Ghosts, while the poor player sits in the driver's seat watching his shield evaporate.

OldNick thinks this is one of many problems that results from a disconnect between art and engineering in the games industry; check his blog entry for the entire article.

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Sergeant Johnson says:

"When I was a kid, we didn't get any fancy-schmanzy Spartan lasers for Christmas. We got two sticks and a rock! And we had to share the rock. Buck up, kids... you're very lucky Marines."

Avateur in the HBO forum pointed out a Halo Wars Q&A with Ensemble Studio's Graeme Devine over at GameTap. Devine is the lead designer on Halo Wars.

In addition to mentioning how Ensemble must simultaneously respect the Halo canon and being free to make the best Halo RTS game Ensemble could make, rather than the best Halo RTS game Bungie could make, the article touches on the touchy issue of console controls:

GameTap: Obviously, the control scheme is always an important subject when discussing real-time strategy games on consoles, how do you go about striking a balance of offering the depth that RTS games are known for, but at the same time, keeping the controls simple enough as to not be overwhelming?

Graeme Devine: I think this is key. When we started work on Halo Wars we started from scratch, we threw the mouse and keyboard paradigm away and rethought what it meant to control a real-time strategy game. I really think that's one of the big differentiators with Halo Wars because it allows us to bring the depth to the controller while, in our opinion, improving how controllable we can make the genre.

Although no solid date is given, Devine says that Halo Wars has the "magic in the disc" to be one of the "biggest games of 2008" so that seems to indicate fans have twelve months or less to wait before they see the first non-Bungie, non-FPS Halo game hit the shelves.