Halo Wars E3 2007 Demo

At the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2007, Ensemble Studios showcased a demo of Halo Wars. The demo was later released on the official halowars.com website (which itself launched at the same time as the demo's release) as a free download, alongside a number of screenshots, renders and concept art.

This demo should not be confused with the announcement trailer released for the game the previous year and the E3 2008 demo, which showcased a build much closer to the final game and the Five Long Years cinematic trailer.

Overview

E3 showcase

The demo was showcased at E3 in 2007. The build was put together in the weeks leading up to the event, and taken to Santa Monica by Producer Chris Rippy and Lead Designer Graeme Devine, wherein the demo was shown to around three hundred journalists over the course of three days, who were able to play the demo. The demo was positively recieved, with the console-centric controls picked up by the players without much issue. To showcase the demo, a number of spare devkits were taken to the event in case of issues, though they were ultimately not needed.

Demo contents

The ten-minute pre-recorded demo showcases Ensemble Studios' lead game designer Graeme Devine playing through a short segment of an alpha build of Halo Wars, showing off a number of features for the first time.

The demo opens with Devine giving a brief rundown of the game's story and setting, before jumping into the action. The actual game footage opens with a panning shot of a Pelican dropship and two Sparrowhawk gunships (notably, the first time these aircraft were ever revealed) heading toward a UNSC base on an unknown Forerunner installation. The track De Facto the Matter from the Halo Wars: Original Soundtrack plays in the background. The Pelican drops off its troops, and Serina informs the player that Covenant forces are situated to the north of the base and about to attack. However, Devine (now controlling the game) proceeds to showcase some of the structures and buildings that make up the base facility.

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Transcript

• Graeme Devine: "Hello! My name is Graeme Devine, lead designer on Halo Wars. I am very excited to give you this early glimpse into the game. Halo Wars is set in the year 2531, right as the UNSC has retaken the planet called Harvest. We follow the adventures of the UNSC support vessel, called Spirit of Fire. One crew member, the ship AI, Serina, will be helping me out today. Let's get to the demo."

Opens to two Pelicans flying overhead.

• Devine: "This is Halo Wars. Built from the ground up for the Xbox 360."

One of the Pelicans fly away while the second flies over a lake.

• Serina: "If you're through taking the scenic route, we need your help. Yeah, get a move on, boys!"

Two smaller UNSC aircrafts join the Pelican.

• Devine: "These are UNSC Hawks; they are one of the new vehicles we are adding into the game."

The aircrafts fly over a wall and arrive at a UNSC base inside a canyon. Marines exit from the Pelican, which flies away.

• Serina: "The Covenant are on the move, north of the base. Why don't we get a little of fire practice in?"

View shifts upwards to Warthogs under repairs near the base entrance.

• Devine: "Before we go get some fire practice in, let's take a look around the base. This is a UNSC base, built by humans. Humans work here. Humans live here. We really wanted to get that feel across. So here's some guys working on Warthogs. Lots of extra wheels."

View shifts left to the airpad.

• Devine: "This is a UNSC airpad. Some Hawks hanging out at the runway. This is an example of buildings UNSC can make in the game. In fact, all of these are buildings you can make in the game."

View shifts left to two missile silos.

• Devine: "Some missile silos. Two guys standing uncomfortably close to the edge."

View shifts downwards to a barracks.

• Devine: "So back here is a really good example of the human flare added into the game. UNSC infantry doing push-ups."

View shifts downwards to a supply depot. Upwards, there is a command center. To its right, there are two vehicle depots.

• Devine: "Here we have supply depots, bringing down supplies from Spirit of Fire, which is orbiting overhead. A command center, and vehicle depots where we keep all of our Warthogs and Scorpions."

View shifts upwards and the reticule hovers over one squad of Marines.

• Devine: "Select is an important part of a real-time strategy game, and there are lots of really good ways to select units in Halo Wars. The easiest way is to point at the squad and press A, and then you can press X to move that squad around."

The squad of Marines moves around the base.

• Devine: "Another way is to double press on the A button, which selects all squads of the same type on the screen at once."

The two squads move around the base.

• Devine: "The third way to hold and hold down the A button, which brings up a paint brush, allowing me to paint the squads I wish to use."

The two squads of Marine move around the base. View shifts upwards, past the base entrance, to two lances of Covenant, each composed of six Unggoy and one Sangheili.

• Devine: "So lets take these squads up and engage the Covenant."

The Marines approach the Covenant and the two sides fire weapons at each other.

• Serina: "Why don't we get some Warthogs up here?"

Despite taking down a few Unggoy, the Marines are wiped out.

• Devine: "Those Needlers are chewing up our infantry. We brought the wrong squad to the battle."

View jumps back to the command center.

• Devine: "So let's jump back to our base. Using the D-Pad, I can jump around the map very quickly. I can jump back to my base, back my battles, and back to my armies."

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Changes from the final release of Halo Wars

The Type-47A Scarab in the demo.

"Last year, it was a lot of the PC RTS still in transition to the console. We've built it from the ground up to be a console RTS, and figuring out how to have the same fun in an RTS game has taken a lot of iteration, and we're actually really happy with the result now. [The 2008 build is] more ability focused than it was last year -- you'd see a lot more special abilities, and the overall gameplay is slanted very much to combat while still retaining a lot of the core RTS balance between combat and economy. It's what Ensemble's known for so we brought that over, but it's done completely differently."

— Dave Pottinger, looking back on the E3 2007 demo build.

The E3 2007 stage demo showcases a radically different game than what eventually released in 2009 - later remarked upon by Pottinger as " a lot of the PC RTS still in transition to the console". When put together, the demo represented one of the first times the art team was able to put all of their work together for a presentation, and helped future development by identifying weaker areas in the visual design. The game has a noticeably muddier visual tone, and showcases a number of units and buildings that never made the final release. One of the most radical of these is the inclusion of the Type-47A Scarab; the Scarab design featured prominently in Halo 2. By the final release, this Scarab was cut entirely and replaced with the Type-47B model that made its debut in Halo 3. Other units seen in the demo and related promotional imagery that would later be cut from the final release include the Elite Rangers and Brute Tank.

Of the changes from this build to the final build, the most notable is that of the UNSC base construction system.

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Some images and media released alongside the demo depict the setting of the demo as taking place on a Halo ring - a vast departure from the shield world setting of the final game.