Halo Wars Central

This is a record of the original interview, which can be found at Halo Wars Addict

Thats right Ladies & Gents. Recently HaloWarsAddict.com was lucky enough to sit down and talk to Graham "Thunder" Somers, about a little title called Halo Wars. You can see the full interview below, Enjoy!

Tom: Thunder, thank you so much for giving up some of your time to come and talk to us about Halo Wars!

Graham: Happy to do it!

Tom: To kick this interview off, could you give us an introduction of who you are and what you do at Ensemble Studios.

Graham: Sure thing. My name is Graham "Thunder" Somers and I'm the Community Manager here at Ensemble Studios. I interface with the fans of our games, troll the forums for feedback and issues, and work on the content for all of our websites.

I used to work on an Age of Empires fan site back in the late 90s, so I'm very familiar with the work that goes into running a site and dealing with fans and forums. I started working in the games industry in 2002 when I was hired by Big Huge Games and in 2005 I found my way home, so to speak, to Ensemble Studios where I was hired on to be the Community Manager.

Tom: Fantastic. Now as we know and have been told by Shane Kim, Halo Wars wasn't ready for the press to play with at Microsofts Gamers Day. Will Halo Wars be making an appearance at E3 this year, if so can you give us any clues as to what we'll be seeing?

Graham: Yeah, we'll have some kind of presence at E3 this year, but just what it will be I can't say.

Tom: During the Alpha, can you tell us about any "Awesome" moments you may have had while playing on Live?

Graham: Absolutely! The first would have to be our statistics page. We had a basic page set up to track how many games people were playing and that sort of thing. It was just a rough page, but it was really cool to see all of the various players who were laying the smack down on each other. Quite a few of the folks involved in the Alpha were playing a great many game and getting really good. It's always exciting for us to have people outside Ensemble Studios play the game for the first time.

Another moment of awesomeness for me was when I was taking it easy on a guy who had only played a few games online. I scouted him out with some Warthogs and saw that he had expanded and was building his economy pretty well. I was impressed and started to play a little more aggressively. The guy rolled into my base with some massive air units a short time later and obliterated me. Not only was I blown away that he had done this but I was gazing in awe at my base being wrecked. Missiles, explosions, destruction, carnage! It was a shame it was my base, because it was really cool to see all of that eye candy.

Tom: Now the Alpha test is over, do you think it would be a wise choice to have a public BETA?

Graham: A public beta is a whole different ball of wax.

Tom: Halo has an incredible community surrounding it, how are you going to ensure Halo Wars doesn’t upset the loyal fanboys, but still appeals to Halo Newcomers?

Graham: We have worked closely with Bungie on the story that we're telling to make sure that it falls in line with their universe. Our leads spent quite a lot of time early on in development at Bungie, talking to them about the game. The last thing we'd want to do when making a game on an existing IP would be to alienate the fans of that IP.

As for Halo newcomers and I do hope we can draw in some of those and grow the fan base to more than just shooter fans, we're bringing a new angle on Halo. That high camera angle that lets players control the epic battles and see this world from a new perspective.

Tom: Gamers love customization, what do you think would be cool to be able to customize in Halo Wars?

Graham: There's a wide variety of customization that I've seen in games, from full on civilization or unit builders to simple little eye candy decals. I guess I lean toward the type of things that have an effect on gameplay. I'd like to have a unique unit that I can build that the other guy can't that compliments my play style.

Tom: Machinima is a beautiful thing. All three Halo games to date have been used in popular Machinima videos, with Halo 3 having phenomenal tools supporting it. Have you guys at Ensemble considered shipping with a few tools to assist with Machinima creation, perhaps something as simple as an option to remove the GUI and pointer?

Graham: Red versus Blue! Yeah we've talked about a number of tools that might be made available to fans. It is possible to turn off the GUI in the game right now, so that might be an easy thing we can do. I don't want to make any promises though. It's amazing what you can forget about when you're in the final stages of development and you're hunting down that last crash bug in the stressful moments before you ship.

Tom: Recently we ran a small community contest so a HWA user would get the chance to ask you guys a question. Simon "newguy2445" Hales was the lucky winner and he asks "A problem with most RTS games in the past is the repetitive nature of the Campaign missions, with basic instructions such as; Go here, collect these resources, destroy this building. How is Ensemble Studios going about with making the Campaign of Halo Wars a fun and exciting experience that does not bore the player?"

Graham: Congratulations Simon!

Yeah I fully agree with you that RTS campaigns can fall into a rut where scenario after scenario you're doing the same thing of building up your base and going to point A to killing something, then B, etc. That gets old. Even at this stage, we have ideas for scenarios that are not of this standard fair. I'd say the story that we're telling is quite compelling, and I think that will be driving a lot of players to finish the campaign to find out what happens.

Tom: Multiplayer has always been a big thing for Halo, do you think when we see the retail release we'll see any Previous Halo features like matchmaking or a party system?

Graham: There is a high bar set isn't there! Multiplayer for the Halo series has been pretty awesome, and that's partly what the Alpha test we did was about. It was a multiplayer test so we had newcomers trying out our matchmaking. We're not quite ready to talk about this part of the game in detail just yet.

Tom: We saw Mr. Devine giving a walk through of Halo Wars at E3 2007, where he talked about the warthog and that it was quite challenging to get the Fishtail physics right. Have any other vehicles proven to be as, if not more, challenging to get the correct feel perfect?

Graham: They all have their challenges, not only with movement but getting the look and the sound right. I think the Warthog was a particular challenge because it is a distinct iconic vehicle from Halo, and the first one that we concentrated on to get it right. The Scarab from that particular demo needed a lot of love to get its movement looking good, and it will continue to need polish. Everything is harder the first time you go for the gusto and then gets progressively easier as you get the tools and procedures refined.

Tom: And finally, if you were a betting man would you put Halo Wars down as a 2008 or 2009 release? :)

Graham: We're going to ship Halo Wars when it's ready.

Tom: Well, once again thank you for this opportunity to talk to you about Halo Wars!

Graham: My pleasure, thanks for the great questions, and keep up the great work on your site.

Interview added on 06/13/20