During the four-year process of developing Halo Wars, the doomed Ensemble Studios have managed to learn a thing or two about the fans of the hit franchise. One of those things is that you don’t keep a Halo fan from his grenades:
Our first focus group was actually Halo fans. I remember that. It was interesting, because one of the first things we learned was how much hardcore Halo fans like throwing grenades.
(laughter)
It seemed like a really funny thing to get out of the control test, but they all would come up and say, “This trigger needs to throw grenades!” Over and over and over again, that was direct feedback — “We need to be able to throw grenades!” So, you can throw grenades now. — Graeme Devine, Lead Designer, to Gamasutra via GameSetWatch
Ultimately, one of Ensemble’s goals was to introduce Halo fans to the RTS genre. We’ll see how well they accomplish this early next year.
