Halo Wars Launch Site

The Halo Wars Launch Site was a website used to market Halo Wars before the release of the game. It contained the viewpoints of the United Nations Space Command and Covenant about the Harvest campaign. This happens between the events of Halo Wars: Genesis and Halo Wars.

Overview
The interface was the planet Harvest rotating, and you were given a choice. This choice was if you wanted to view the UNSC side or the Covenant side.
 * UNSC side - You got a blue colored interface with Serina narrating the text in the interface.
 * Covenant side - You got a purple colored interface with the Prophet of Regret narrating the text in the interface.

Once you picked a side, you got to pick a location on the rotating Harvest. If you hovered over the location the relevant sides narrator will tell a bit of info about what was happening. This was key points where both sides was having operations in. In these areas there was an animation of what was happening in that location with some points you could click. These points were text boxes with story tidbits, some of these were even voiced by the relevant character in Halo Wars.

Transcripts
UNSC Side

Covenant Side

Related marketing
There was a website "sidebar ad" created that linked to this website. It featured the tagline "Battles take soldiers but wars need leaders", with a small interactive section where the user can MAC blast a Scarab.

Production notes
The site was made by the team at AKQA. The site featured a rotating Harvest that utilized the Papervision3D of Adobe Flash to render interactive points of interest which rotated in sync with a rendered video of Harvest.

The model for the planet Harvest used on the site was created in Maya by Matthew Law. He also created the transitions to the surface and ensured they seamlessly flowed into footage captured from the game itself.

The surface terrain was made using locations from Campaign and Multiplayer maps from Halo Wars. The levels from the campaign that were used was Relic Approach, and Alpha Base. The maps from the multiplayer that were used was Chasms, Terminal Moraine, and Frozen Valley. Nate Riley also made the Halo Wars posters that were unlockable on the website.

Antonio Gomez a creative developer worked on the site and its "sidebar ad". Adam Marrs a Computer Scientist also worked on the project.