Despite the fact that Halo Wars was released a decade and a half ago, we still haven’t heard from developer Ensemble Studios as to why the main character of the franchise wasn’t included in this RTS.

In fact, Halo Wars was released in 2009 as an Xbox 360 exclusive (back when Microsoft was serious about exclusivity) and twisted the Halo formula into a real-time strategy game that pitted humans against the Covenant on a larger scale. Historically, this game predates Halo: Combat Evolved by 21 years, so it’s essentially a prequel of sorts for the franchise, and it even managed to meet the challenges of the controller (not what RTSs are usually tailored for…).

Despite the Halo name, Master Chief was not honored in Halo Wars. Although the Spartans can be controlled on the battlefields (they are obviously powerful units), the mascot figure of the franchise does not appear. Why not? Dave Pottinger, lead designer on Halo Wars, told VideoGamer in an interview that Ensemble Studios simply didn’t want to include the character in the game. “We told the game that you had to care about everyone else. We thought, as soon as Master Chief shows up, that’s all anybody’s going to care about,” Pottinger said.

This is not stupid. In most games, you control Master Chief (though Halo 3 started to change that in 2007, and that was an Xbox 360 exclusive), and he’d been in the saddle for eight years when Halo Wars came out. Because it was a prequel, the studio had to take a step back from the character so that the story could be told properly without any “star guests.

Halo Wars 2 will also be almost eight years since its release, and it’s interesting that despite the popularity of the spin-off, there’s been no talk of a third installment. But with Halo Studios (aka 343 Industries) working on several Halo projects (using Unreal Engine 5), maybe it’s in the pipeline.

Source: GameRant