Barcelona X06 – Bungie announce Peter Jackson and Halo Wars RTS
Currently underway in Barcelona, Spain is X06, Microsofts own personal gaming convention. It’s a great source of fun and news for XBOX fans, though Bungie have straight up taken the focus with two big announcements. With good reason too.
First of all, they’ve announced a whole new video game studio has recently emerged, “Wingnut Interactive”. This studio is a collaboration of film master Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Microsoft Game Studios and Bungie guys. Together they’ll be working on a new Halo episode (don’t worry, Halo 3 is still on schedule), but exactly what this new episode will involve is still being kept under wraps. Bungie didn’t mention much about the Halo movie, but considering the production values of the past two Halo episodes, now with Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh involved, this’ll be something to look forward to. Mr. Jackson had this to say -
“Working directly with the Bungie guys to help carve out and reimagine another piece of the Halo game universe is a dream come true. Combining the creative and technical talents of Bungie Studios with the fire and passion of Wingnut Interactive just seems like a great recipe for success and the perfect way to start a new kind of partnership in the video game world. I can’t wait.”
As if that, Halo 3 and the Halo movie isn’t enough for fans to look forward to, Halo Wars has just been unveiled, with a live website now up (including a nifty trailer). Halo Wars, though many questions are being asked, appears to be a fairly traditional RTS for the XBOX 360, based in the Halo universe. Players will control dozens of popular vehicles, such as Warthogs and Scorpion tanks. Once again, don’t worry about Bungie taking time off Halo 3 for this one. Halo Wars is being created by RTS masters Ensemble Studios, who are responsible for the Age Of Empires series. Bungie state they’re taking care of the story though, and watching over Ensemble so to once again immerse players in the Halo universe, this time from a birds eye perspective. Bungie are still keeping a fair bit quiet about this, though a few interesting things they’ve confirmed is that it’s set before Halo 1, it is 360 exclusive, and they’re convincing us that the RTS genre won’t once again be ridiculed via console controllers.