I don’t know if I’d be so interested in Halo Wars 2 if I didn’t care about the lore. Would I still care if they retained the same design but changed all the graphics to something else entirely? From a war room perspective, making a real-time strategy (RTS) from Halo makes some amount of sense, but Microsoft couldn’t simply do so without releasing it for console.
Considering you can’t have a Halo game that isn’t on Xbox, that means designing the game with gamepads in mind. The creative attempts to remedy the controller conundrum have ranged from Stormrise’s perplexing close-camera unit switching (also made by Creative Assembly) to EndWar’s voice commands. Halo Wars’ solution was to remove the complexities that made RTS difficult on console, for a skeletal but functional experience. In that regard, Halo Wars 2 is a pureblood sequel.
If you expect anything from Halo, it’s an imaginatively involving story. You find out rather quickly Halo Wars 2 isn’t very interested in telling a tale, but more interested in keeping up appearances. Excessively impressive cutscenes and emotionally-charged menus are supposed to get you in the Halo mood, leaving you none the wiser to a campaign disproportionately light on story.
Most if not all the narrative feels entirely made of production values. There’s an inane amount of talking during missions, but it doesn’t do anything more than detail objectives. The cutscenes are already sparse, so without dialogue that endears you to the world and characters, you’re left with the warm fuzzies of instructional text. Some may argue the RTS genre isn’t really the time and place for story, but this is Halo – a certain calibre of narrative is expected.
One advantage Halo Wars 2 does have in RTS is unit design. You immediately know what every unit is, because you know what an Elite is, you know what a Hunter looks like. Minuscule as that may sound, it’s something designers have to think about. Halo’s just lucky enough to already have uniquely crafted models.
from Eve’s Feed http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/games/89885318/Review-Halo-Wars-2
from
https://evewilki1971.wordpress.com/2017/02/28/review-halo-wars-2/
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