Are You Ready for More Halo?

For those of you who wanted to cry as you finished Halo 3, I have some good news for you: Microsoft is not done with Halo yet. We all know that an RTS, Halo Wars, is in the works, but that’s not all. That’s right, there’s more to come; it’s time to celebrate.

I’ll admit that if there’s going to be a new addition to the canonical Halo series, I’ll be right on board. And it looks like that will be the case. In an interview with GI.biz, Phil Spencer of Microsoft Game Studios let it slip that multiple Halo projects are in the works. He said that “there’s more than one team building Halo games right now. There are more than two or three teams building Halo things right now.” So it’s not just one or two projects; it’s many. How excited does that make you?

Baby Halo RPG? No thanks.

Well, half of me is excited for more Master Chief and Cortana. The other half of me is terrified that someone will make a Halo RPG or a Covenant vs. Human racing game. I don’t want to see my favorite series be destroyed by even a single bad game. It’s pretty much hit or miss with how drawing out a series will go; it can either be a massive success like Final Fantasy or it could over stay its welcome, like what’s happened to Sonic the Hedgehog.

But I have full faith in Microsoft Game Studios. They would never let that happen. Right?

Well, I certainly hope so. But Phil Spencer also admitted that Microsoft only owns the rights to the Halo franchise, not necessarily the companies that are making the new games. As he said, “Some of them we will own, some of them we won’t. It’s never been, for me, about who you own or don’t own - it’s about working with the best creative talent in the industry.” It sounds promising to me, but it brings up another risk: Halo being non-exclusive to Xbox 360.

Yes, there will be life beyond Halo Wars.

There’s so much we don’t know about what could or would happen with the Halo series. There are risks of bad games or non-360 games. But at least Phil Spencer has given us hope that there is life beyond Halo 3 and Halo Wars. And for now, that’s enough for me.