Master Chief (Halo)
MCPON John-117, or "Master Chief", is a fictional character and the protagonist of the "Halo" fictional universe created by Bungie. Master Chief is a playable character in the series of science fiction first-person shooter video games "", "Halo 2", "Halo 3", "Halo 4", and "". Outside video games, the character appears in books and graphic novels—"", "", "", and ""—and has cameos in other "Halo" media, including "", "", "The Halo Graphic Novel", "Halo Legends" and "".
Halo Wars 2
Creative Assembly's studio director Tim Heaton said the gameplay of "Halo Wars 2" would not be similar to their "Total War" series. Their approach was to build upon the foundation established with "Halo Wars". With "Halo Wars 2", the development team hoped to introduce new players to the strategy game genre while appeasing experienced gamers by including a range of multiplayer modes that a wide spectrum of players could enjoy. They also wanted to extend the purpose of leader units and their abilities by giving each of them a more defining role in the style of play they represent. Creative Assembly thought the game needed more artillery units capable of performing long range attacks, however there were currently no suitable vehicles in the "Halo" universe. So they created two new vehicles for the role and checked they did not feel out of place using reference material supplied by 343 Industries. Creative director Alistair Hope viewed staying true to the source material as an important factor for all of Creative Assembly's games, but stated that the team were given more freedom to explore and expand the "Halo" universe than they had anticipated. Hope praised the control scheme used in "Halo Wars" and aimed to enhance the system by ensuring "Halo Wars 2" would be intuitive to play on a console. One common control feature included in many PC RTS games but absent from the original "Halo Wars" is control groups, which lets sets of units be manually assigned to a key. As "Halo Wars 2" was developed for console and PC, the designers were keen to include the feature for both versions of the game. 343 Industries had initially considered supporting cross-platform play between Windows and Xbox One devices but the feature was ultimately excluded from the game at launch.
The Blitz game mode resulted from experimenting with ideas for a fast-paced and accessible variation of RTS gameplay. The development team wanted to streamline mechanics, such as base building and resource management, which players typically viewed as being complex and intimidating. The initial design of Blitz involved players having an army roster, like in tabletop war games. After playtesting this version, they realized that the scale of battles would shrink and become less appealing over the course of the match. They revised the mode by implementing a card-and-deck system for unit deployment and introducing randomly spawning resources on the maps. Blitz was influenced by the Warzone game mode from "Halo 5: Guardians" and Blizzard Entertainment's collectible card game "Hearthstone", taking design cues from the card collecting and deck building systems. 343 Industries' head of strategy games Dan Ayoub cited multiplayer online battle arena games as impactful on the design of Blitz, since they replaced resource management with individual unit combat.
"Halo" franchise development director Frank O'Connor explained that "Halo Wars 2" would be more integrated with other fiction in the universe than its predecessor. The story of the first "Halo Wars" is set 20 years before "" and is largely isolated from other games within the series. This was to prevent it from interfering with other projects ("Halo 3" and "") that were also in development at the time. Consequently, "Halo Wars 2" is set in the contemporary fictional timeline following the events of "Halo 5: Guardians", and is said to have a "sense of scale" that the first game was missing. This decision also opened a narrative thread in "Halo Wars 2", in which the returning characters are placed in an unfamiliar universe with outdated technology. Narrative director Kevin Grace said they took most of their inspiration for the game's tone from "Halo: Combat Evolved".