Ensemble Studios founder Tony Goodman said that Halo creator Bungie apparently disapproved of 2009's console real-time strategy game Halo Wars.
In an interview with Games Industry International, Goodman revealed the game was never intended to be a Halo-branded title at all, but was rebranded at Microsoft's urging.
"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?' But things aren't quite that simple."
Another issue faced by the studio was the tension between Ensemble and Bungie. According to the Games Industry report Goodman said, Bungie didn't have the bandwidth to create the project on their own and Bungie didn't appreciate the IP being used in a different genre.
"Another problem was that Bungie was never up for it... Bungie was kind of sore about the idea. What they called it was 'the whoring out of our franchise' or something," he said. "Yeah, that didn't create a great relationship between us and Bungie; they viewed us as someone infringing [on their franchise]."
Halo Wars is set in the year 2531, 21-years before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. The player leads human soldiers aboard the warship Spirit of Fire in an effort to stop an ancient fleet of ships from falling to the Covenant.
Halo Wars was well received and earned positive reviews. The game has an average score of 81.90-percent and 82-percent on aggregate web site Metacritic. The latest Halo game, Halo 4, will release on Nov. 6. The game is the first numbered Halo in the series to be developed by 343 Industries.
Watch the Halo Wars trailer below...
