Milestones Coming and Going
The milestones are coming hard and fast for Halo Wars. We are going to be putting in a lot of late hours to make sure that all of the t’s have been crossed and the i’s dotted and making sure that we make you a great game.  The Single Player campaign and AI is getting a lot of tweaks right now as well as art and other assets. 

This is a very exciting time to be working here, because this is the magic hour of making games, when everything comes together.  Playing the game is very important here at the office and everyone gives input on the game during our playtests, so every one of our employee’s opinions matters.  It is awesome to come to work and see a unit get a fresh coat of paint or a level get that small tweak you asked for. 

Site Changes
We are going to be making some more changes on HaloWars.com in the coming months.  Some will be very easy to notice other will be more subtle.  We will be upgrading the servers and software that runs the site as well as the look and feel of the site.  You will notice more content in the UNSC Field Manual and new information about the Covenant as well. 

There will be new forums added as we get closer to launch and there will be new email addresses for directing your questions to.  We will be disabling the Private Message feature from the site in the near future as well. 

I know it sounds like a big laundry list of things to do, and it is.  However we hope to keep working on the site and building the community for what will be a great game.

Leipzig and More
The PR wagons are rolling for Halo Wars and you should be hearing more about Halo Wars in the coming months.  Leipzig was a great way to get Halo Wars out infront of our European fans and they seemed to really enjoy it.  We had positive reports from our most skeptical fans who were saying that console RTS’s never work.  Here is a quote from our latest developer diary.   Definitely check them out if you have not already.

“The demos have been rolling along.  For each group we do a quick control overview and then give as many people as possible a chance to play against the AI.  We actually had to bump the difficulty up for a few of our groups.  Some people need almost no instruction on how to attack this game.  It was fun to just sit back and watch them play.” 
People are able to pick up the game and just start playing after a short time.  It is a great thing to see.

We have some other events that are coming up soon to show off Halo Wars.  I can’t talk about them yet but you should be seeing more of Halo Wars in the media soon.

Graham “Thunder” Somers has left the building. 
He made me promised not to put this in the monthly update, but seeing he does not work here anymore he has little say it what goes on (sorry Thunder).  Thunder has returned to the loving embrace of his home country and city of Vancouver.  There he entered a magical cocoon and will one day emerge as a giant moth defending his home city from massive radioactive lizards to the cheer of tens of thousands. 

In all honesty, Thunder is a great guy and worked with Ensemble Studios first as a fan himself running a fan site and then later as our community manager for Age of Empires 3 and Halo Wars.  He was homesick for Canada so he decided to take his dog and pony show home.  Thunder will be missed here at Ensemble.

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