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Halo Wars - Xbox 360

by Steven Williamson on 15 July 2008, 13:33

Tags: Halo Wars, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), PC, Xbox 360, Strategy

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Streamlined interface and accessible control scheme

What we do know about the control scheme in Halo Wars is that the ‘A’ button will be used mainly to move units around, tapping it once to select a single unit and twice to select all units within that class. They’ll also be the option to 'paintbrush' over units to select them, whereas the shoulder buttons will be used to bring up a radial resource management or unit building screen, which can be accessed when you scroll over a building or unit.

Resource management will play a role in Halo Wars, but won’t be the main focus of the game. In a Q& A with Gametap , lead designer Graeme Devine confirmed that Ensemble didn’t want to focus too heavily on a deep resource management system.

There's more to resources than digging in the dirt. Time, unit count, buildings, and many of the in-game objects in a real-time strategy game are really resources in disguise. For example, if it takes me four minutes to research nuclear missiles, then I need to dedicate myself to making sure I have those four minutes. So I feel it's a matter of coming at the resource/depth issue thinking of more than stone, gold, and wood. There are a lot of knobs in there that we can tune, some more visible than others, but there's a lot of depth there.

Instead, we can expect the game's main focus to be on combat.

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