Talking of Forge, the character we were introduced today was a Sergeant Forge, a character that just so happens to share the same name as a certain mode in Halo 3. Is there any relation there?
No. It’s a funny story though! We go over to Bungie and we show them some of the story and a few of the cinematics and they’re really busy on Halo 3 – “So Sergeant Forge? That’s interesting we put a Forge in our game” they say. “Ah cool! Is he a Sergeant?” And they went, “No, not really.” He didn’t actually say what it was, so there I was thinking cool, they’ve got a Forge character in there. That was certainly the inference I got. Then the game comes out and now I know what they mean! Yeah, no relation!

How important is the community aspect to you? Most FPSs now come with online stat-trackers. Is this something we can expect with Halo Wars?
One of the most important things to me is co-op play. I’m talking personally here, I love playing co-op. Community through co-op play is a lot of fun, being able to play the through the campaign in co-op – but it doesn’t really answer your question! Playing online, getting your stats, seeing which squad you are most accurate with, seeing if I’ve produced more Scorpion Tanks than you. All that stat-tracking is in there. How much we exploit that we haven’t actually finalised yet, but we like what you can do in Halo 3…

Microsoft has announced plans to close Ensemble following the release of Halo Wars. How do you motivate yourself to make a really cool game?
I’ve been working on Halo Wars for over four years, so I’m not about to walk away from a game I’ve spent four years of my life with. I really care about the end results of the game and so does everyone at Ensemble. That’s something that’s come through since the news loud and clear I think. You just walk around the hallways at Ensemble and you see how much people care about this game. It’d be very easy for us to just finish a game, mail it in and sell that but we are not really in it for that. It’s our proud shout to Microsoft, and the reason why their mistake is so obvious. Ensemble is going out with a bang.

Microsoft revealed that there will be a new company formed from parts of Ensemble Studios following Halo Wars’ release. Will you be working for the new company?
No, I will not be working for the new company.

Thanks for your time Graeme.

Halo Wars launches exclusively on Xbox 360 in February 2009.

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