Bungie saw Halo Wars as 'whoring out' the franchise - Report

In other words: How dare somebody try to be innovative and do something different instead of crapping out the same stuff over and over.

Halo Wars is my favorite Halo game

Halo Wars wasnt that bad, now Halo 3: ODST as a full price stand alone game was whoring out the franchise as is continuing the series without Bungie.

Halo Wars was a good game, It is the best console RTS exclusive i ever played on a console. Also IMHO Halo:Reach is the best Bungie creation plus Halo 1.

I wonder what the original would have been like. Halo Wars was awful.

I can't take this article seriously from a company that doesn't consider books, comics, action figures and pajamas as "whoring out" the franchise.

Funny...since bungie actually started halo out as an rts.

I liked Halo Wars and felt it was made with love. I just played the multiplayer and only got through a couple levels of single player (I always do that with RTSs).

ODST was the only unnecessary Halo game in my opinion.

Bungie People never risks imo cause Halo series since the fist release was pretty same! same guns, Vehicle...Only on Reach i saw some new features which was kinda late! but with new team on Halo 4 we are seeing some really great new things! with Kinect and Move they can make really nice Strategy games i don't get it why they don't!

Whoring out of the franchise? Sure. But was it a fun game? Hell yes it was. Yeah, it was a simplified RTS, but as far as RTSes on consoles go, this was incredibly fun to play! I actually played through twice.

lol halo wars was the best game in the series...

Hah isn't that ironic. Bungie was mad about Microsoft "whoring out" Halo, then they go join up with Activision. A company well known for handing It's IP's to other developers so they can churn out an iteration every year, milking it to death.

Bungie better get used to the franchises they make getting handed to other devs.

I didn't think Halo Wars was that bad in terms of gameplay, but I thought the story was definitely one of its weak points.

Wow Bungie Halo wars was Whoring out the name? Not Halo 3 ODST, Reach ????

Bleh whats with all the devs coming out pissing and moaning.. They are not complaining when the money comes in from sales on said game that is whoring out the name....

They don't have any right to complain about brand integrity after the "ha-ha, buy #3" ending of Halo 2

Cliffhanger endings only work if

A: The sequel comes soon

B: There's enough proper resolution of significant subplots

C: Both.

Halo 2 did neither. Almost nothing was resolved and in fact, more questions were put up at the end than the game started with. And we had to wait until a new CONSOLE before 3.

I enjoy the Halo series, but I will point out it's faults as well as Bungie's.

I think Halo Wars was pretty decent but not good enough. I tried it but after a week or so I traded it in.

I guess I'm one of the black sheep who actually enjoyed Halo Wars. Sure it was a stripped down strategy game and being able to play as covenant in multiplayer but giving them no single play campaign was a bad choice but I still had fun in the initial playthrough. I always thought Halo had a good universe for a strategy game...hopefully a better one will come someday. Blizzard want to take a crack at it maybe...?

"Microsoft was pretty risk averse and they said, 'I don't know if we want to take the risk of creating strategy games on a console. We'd feel better if Halo were attached to it.' The difficult part of that was it took the game back about a year in development, and I think it never quite turned out the same," Goodman said. "They just said, 'Why don't you just paint over what you have with Halo stuff?'"

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M$ has these f***ing execs and suits in charge now, they need a true creative visionary like they had when the Xbox came out.

Where are Ensemble Now? Gone. Dead. One of the many talented 1st party studios that got closed off this generation. Lucky survivors include RARE who now are Kinect only, Turn 10, Bungie who abandoned ship, and a few others.

Ensemble was a great company. I don't blame Bungie for feeling the way they do since Halo Wars was an unnecessary game on every level.

Yea I think the honor of whoring the franchise goes to ODST.

Personally I wasn't a big fan of Halo Wars. I like Halo but the strategy game wasn't a very good strategy game. It had no flexibility, you had to build your bases a certain way and in certain locations and the way you controlled units should have made it easier but it made it more difficult, If Halo Wars was a PC game it would have been better just because you'd have macros for your squads so you wouldn't have to throw everything at your enemies in one strike......

To me the strategy game that nailed it on consoles was Civ Rev....it just felt good and right and the fact it was turn based made a difference.

Gamespot must be getting paid to do all these Halo-related not newsworthy stories.

Good game, had fun playing the campaign and skirmish modes in co-op. Was not really deep enough to keep me interested long term, but it did get me playing the first RTS game I had touched since the original C&C, on a console no less.

Kinda sucks to hear Bungie's attitude about it was poor. What would the game have been like with their full support of the project? Could it have realized their original vision of the halo franchise as an RTS? We will never know.

Though I enjoyed Halo Wars, it has its moments, I agree it did feel like an odd combination. Never, never, never put a real time strategy game on a console, they're always reserved for the PC. I was hoping they would release it for the PC, it would have had a lot more potential if they did so and allowed mod support, it would have been nice to see what people could have made with it.

I actually preferred Halo Wars to Halo 3 ODST XD

halo was initially a rts in development, before becoming a fps. i think they were more pissed that someone else was just..... taking their "baby"

Considering Bungie were never allowed to make anything but Halo under Microsoft and Lionhead aren't allowed to make anything but Fable, this isn't much of a surprise.

Microsoft are creatively bankrupt in the sheer monotony of their first party output.

i find this article very ammusing i guess bungie forgot there roots halo was developed along time ago as an RTS before the xbox it was meant to be on Mac as a RTS now there saying it got whored out WTF Bungie i love you guys but come on you wanted to make halo an rts in the first place

I've got a friend who plays this and Starcraft 2 for like 6-10 hours every week. As long as the whores are good, clean, and putting out without any fuss, let'em do what they do. Everyone wins except the hater in the corner mad, but that person hates winning anyways.

I actually enjoyied Halo Wars. Even though it was an very simple RTS but the control of it was actually pretty good. Shame it never came out on the PC because I know alot of RTS fans would have picked this up just because it was a new RTS game.

oh halo wars... your such a dirty wh***

I've had Halo Wars at the ass end of my gamefly queue forever, based on the commentors below it seems like I should move it up and give it a try...or just spend $10 for it

I don't think MS was quite whoring out the franchise with the Halo Wars gig. I think it was more akin to pole dancing!

@Suikogaiden Yeah, every Super Mario Bros after the first was a total milk-a-thon.

How dare they.

Halo Wars has some of the Best CG animation in it's story scenes. I liked the game but the animation was what made me play. If they could make an actual movie for Halo with that graphics engine they used for the cut scenes i would be camping in line.

Of course it was "whoring." I said that when it was new MS just slapped the Halo name on it to get a bunch of fanboys on board that would normally have no interest in such a game.

Nothing against the game but it is just like when Nintendo slaps Mario on everything...