And They’re Off!

First let me start off by saying Happy New Year to you all! Our monthly Halo Wars Updates are no longer going to be tucked away in our forum.  Starting right here and now we’ll be slapping these suckers right up here on the front page for all to see.

We’re getting back into the swing of things here at Ensemble Studios after time off for the holidays.  We’ve got a lot of work to do this year and we’re under no delusions about the pressure that is on us to deliver a great game.  The team at Bungie has set the bar incredibly high and we don’t want to let them, or you, down.

Halo Timeline

We’ve added a basic timeline to our website to give everyone an idea of when the events of Halo Wars take place in relation to Halo: Combat Evolved and the subsequent Halo titles.   Some of you will likely recognize the majority of the dates and events, especially those of you who have read the various Halo books.  It was pretty cool to plug a few of our own dates into the timeline, adding a little of our own flavor to the Halo universe.  We may add a few more dates to it later on as we get closer to release.

In putting this timeline together I needed to figure out when the Spirit of Fire was built.  I found a mention on a fan created site that listed the year as 2418 and ran that past Lead Designer Graeme Devine.  He was a little puzzled by that and asked where the date came from because that sounded wrong to him.  I showed him the version of the logo that the fan site had posted which had that particular date on it.  Puzzled, Graeme went off to try and figure out what the deal was.  Flash forward to laundry night and I’m throwing my Halo Wars shirt in the washing machine when the Spirit of Fire logo that is on the front catches my eye.  2473.  The date on the logo had changed at some point! No one is exactly sure why or how, but the date on the logo had been changed from 2473 to 2418.  Graeme confirmed that the correct year was indeed 2473 and the date on the logo has been changed to reflect this.

Desktop Wallpaper

Some of you are no doubt getting familiar with the work of our concept team, and my desktop here at work has a rotating theme of pieces from these guys.  My current desktop background is currently the image on the left, and we thought we’d share.  Some of you might remember this or have it as part of a pack of Halo Wars art that was made available on Xbox Live back in September 2006 when the game was first announced.  I hadn’t given the image a second thought until I saw a little thumbnail sized version of it recently.  I believe it was the size of the image that’s available in the art pack, so I asked a few artists about a larger version and was steered in the right direction.  Bam! It was my new desktop wallpaper as soon as I saw it.  It’s a simple image that really boils down the conflict to what it’s all about, survival.  You can grab it from our concept art gallery.

You may notice a little bit more variety to our updates here on HaloWars.com this year, rather than just standard issue Monthly Updates.  This is going to be a great year, we hope you’ll stick with us and share the ride as we charge ahead on the game.