Halo Wars ViDoc: Halo Times Ten

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On January 23rd, 2009 the first ViDoc of Halo Wars was released on Xbox LIVE marketplace. It tells how a different perspective can change the gameplay and an announcement of the demo planned for February the 5th. In the video the Spirit of Fire is shown at the Planet Arcadia in the Procyon system, proving that Harvest would not be the only world visited in the game.

Transcript
(The rating for teens are shown and words appear on the right bottom)


 * Procyon System


 * Arcadia

February 9th, 2531

(Shows Spirit Of Fire and the ship interior)

Captain Cutter: "Serina! Situation update please."

(A.I. sounds)

Serina: "Getting visuals now Captain."

(Screen shows Omega Team fighting)

(Switches to show Ensemble Studios employees talking)

Graeme: "When we play the original Halo games you know, an explosion takes up the whole screen. So I'm gonna view a fast moving purple thing, and it will come at me and die."

Graeme:  "In Halo Wars it's going to be a view from forty feet up, so it's not going to be one explosion; it's going to be twenty."

(Shows UNSC fighting against the Covenant)

Dave: "One of the things we wanna do with Halo Wars was tell the Halo story. Show the Halo universe in a different way, and actually bring strategy game to the console."

Jerome: "In Halo Wars you get to control...everything."

Lance: "All of the Grunts, and Elites, and Brutes, and Choppers, and Ghost, and Banshees, and all these really cool vehicles plus a lot of stuff we added."

(Shows the Covenant army and vehicles, then the UNSC army and vehicles)

(Shows Spartans engaging the Covenant)

Jerome: "You control heroes, you get to control Spartans, you get to control small armies of Spartans."

(Shows a Spartan engaging a Brute Chieftain, then armies of Spartans engaging the Covenant)

Jerome: "Everything is under your control in a real-time strategy."

(Shows a couple of Banshees and a Spartan hijacking one of the Banshees)

Dave: "We wanted something the fans perceive the things that they know and love in a different perspective."

Dave:  "Spartan jack-in..ah..it is one of the best things in the game."

(Shows Spartans jacking-in or hijacking a Vampire and a Wraith)

Dave:  "They jump on top of the enemy tanks, they beat the crap out of the tank, they rip off the hatch, they toss out the driver, they hop inside and they take over that vehicle."

Dave:  "And people..ah..are use to seeing that from a first-person shooter standpoint, where everything's very large, but we have all that same detail in Halo Wars."

(Showing more gameplay battles including one with the Locusts)

Jerome:  "Some of the battles in the game are small, and some of the battles in the game are really big. What's cool about that would be, least the campaign is.....that's base on how you play."

(Shows Omega Team with a few Warthogs engaging the Covenant base)

Jerome: "If you spend more time going to fight the Covenant, you may be dealing with a larger..force than if you would've gotten there quicker."

Dave:  "Using those choices which is the hallmark for a strategy game; "how do I want to build my army"?"

Dave:  "And by the end you've got you know...twelve or fifteen Scorpion tanks rolling across the landscape."

(Shows Scorpion tanks and a army of marines after that, then the starting of Alpha Base)

Dave:  "Or you could have forty or fifty marines, it's really kind of your choice."

(Shows Alpha Base again)

Dave: "So the game focuses more about combat which is pretty similar to what Halo fans will expect. Ah..people wanna blow stuff up, myself included."

(Super Scarab exploding)

Dave: "It's a console game, stuff blows up really really well in Halo Wars, but it is also a game where you have to think."

Graeme: "The new part of this game is for a lot of people is actually playing an RTS. In the FPS game you could be using one weapon and then use one single tactic."

(Showing different tactics to beat enemy)

Graeme:  "While in our game you have to plan multiple strategies on the screen at the same time."

Lance: "You're the general."

(Carpet bomb is launched by a Shortsword to destroy a few locusts)

Lance: "Training units, and using them as essentials to complete your mission.''

(2 Locusts and a few grunt squads blow up)

Lance: "Commanding your armies or commanding your resource gathering or economy..."

(Shows Supply pads receiving resources from supply ships, followed by the upgrading of Grizzlies which later on canister shelled a few Locusts)

Graeme: "You manage resources, which you buy out of them and actually use those resources to upgrade and change your army to form a strategy to quickly win."

(An epic battle between the Covenant, the UNSC and the Forerunner sentinels take place)

Jerome: "There's a lot of different definitions for armies, right...There's a teched-out army, maybe not a bigger army but you spent more of your resources on technologies and things like that, so it's a powerful army."

(Slight cinematic of Spartan Red Team coming out of a clumsily driven warthog, followed by another scene at the Apex site with the Prophet of Regret and the Arbiter talking after which showcased a battle between the UNSC and Covenant, showing the massive difference in numbers)

Dave: "That actually maps out Halo Wars really well, because in our game,for the UNSC, they are the regimented army. Uh, but the Covenant are kind of religious zealots, they can bring a lot more units to the fight, but each of these units is a lot weaker."

(A turret is constructed followed by different scenes of battles in the game and upgrading of units)

Dave:"Halo Wars is a game about bases, it's a strategy game, I got to have a good base of operations, otherwise I can't field a very good army."

Graeme: "You start with one unit for a base and by the end of the game you have 250 infantry or you know 5, uh... Scorpion tanks or choose to upgrade them and make your current Scorpions even better. It's a lot of fun to be able to do that.

(Shows some Covenant warehouses producing supplies followed by some Warthogs collecting supply crates near some trees)

Dave: "I am actually very happy with uh... the way the economy is represented in Halo Wars. They are faster, you know, not managing 75 villagers chopping down trees, but the depth is still there."

Graeme: "We didn't want people to aim into it, we thought that was um..You know, not what a console player wanted to do, they want to focus on the combat."

Dave: "It's quick, it's easy to play and it's very simple. I bounce back to my base and hit the supply pad upgrade, I am back into the fight."

(The previously stated actions were shown, with the upgrade complete and the immediate jump back to the battle. Many different large scale battles are shown across multiple maps soon after.)

Graeme: It's just this long scale look of the actual war, it's not "One be many", it's "Many be many"."

Dave: "It's a fast paced game, it's an adrenaline rush wherever you go. But it has that strategy aspect to it, that people have'nt seen in a Halo game before."

(End Transmission)