Pirth Outskirts Skirmish Map Page Released

Pirth Outskirts, a 1v1 skirmish map, is laid out for us today by one of the original Artists. Paul Jaquays, formerly at Ensemble Studios, gives us how he came up with the art style for the map on the Pirth Outskirts Map page. He's also kind enough to include his concept art image from development.

I developed the area as a remote vacation destination with mysterious ancient ruins, modern hotels, and dramatically steep, mist-shrouded cliffs into which breathtaking waterfalls poured majestically. On top of this, I layered the planet's recent, tragic history. Covenant bombs had cut the area off from the cities and turned the man-made structures into smoking rubble.

Blood Gulch Skirmish Map Info Posted

Blood Gulch, a remake of the Halo FPS series map, is a popular 1v1 map. Today we unveil it on our Skirmish Map Information page.

We put the hooks on the outside of the map and sort of isolated so that players who take them can have a big advantage. The 2 extra bases in the middle of the map are close enough to each other that a lot of fighting takes place within range of their turrets, and that middle area can be a great place to control.

Halo Wars Dev Blog: Lessons Learned

Dave Pottinger, Halo Wars Lead Designer, has written up a small post-mortem on the Halo Wars Project. Called Lessons Learned it talks a bit about what it was like getting Halo Wars out the door, and what he took away from it. The Dev Blog, as always, includes some never before seen photos from Halo Wars Development and Ensemble Studios closure.

"Lessons Learned. Those two words usually strike fear into the hearts of many steely-eyed game developers. Synonymous with the dreaded ‘Post Mortem’, many regard those exercises as a feel-good-love-in-trip-fests-of-hate-and-venom."

Halo Wars Wins Best Strategy Game from G4TV Gamer's Choice Awards

Robot Entertainment is proud to announce that Halo Wars won Best Strategy Game in the Gamer's Choice Awards. There was some great competition, and all of the games in the running were very worthy.

Check out the rest of the winners at the Gamer's Choice Award Website.

Blood River Skirmish Map Information Revealed

Blood River is the last of the Historic Battles Maps to be posted on the Halo Wars Skirmish Maps Page. Blood River is a small 1v1 with lots of hooks and allows for good use of infantry.

With starting positions placed in opposite corners, up on a hills, and a river with only 2 crossings above it, even the inexperienced player can feel relatively safe at the onset of a Blood River match. Then there’s the look, we chose this map to be set inside of the Forerunner shield world simply because we didn’t have one in that location yet. We always intended to make sure players of all game sizes (1v1, 2v2, 3v3) have a chance/choice to play on all our worlds.