The Halo franchise has only stepped away from the first-person-shooter genre one before with the real-time strategy game Halo Wars, but according to Halo 4's Executive producer Kiki Wolfkill, the franchise could step away from the FPS genre again if the experience fits.
Wolfkill said in a recent interview with GameSpot that 343 Industries has a always had big vision for the Halo universe and the developer would consider moving outside the FPS genre to tell a certain story.
"I think we'd look at what the most interesting genre, medium, delivery mechanism is to tell a certain story, and if it moves the IP forward in an interesting way, we'll do it," Wolfkill said. "The first-person shooter is the best place to tell one kind of story but as you can see from Forward Unto Dawn and stuff like that, there are other parts of the story that are interesting to tell in different ways."
Ensemble Studios, famous for the Age of Empires real-time strategy series, developed Halo Wars. Microsoft acquired the studio in 2001, but shutdown Ensemble Studios eight years later in 2009.
The game received generally positive reviews and has an average of 81.90 percent and 82/100 on aggregating web sites Game Rankings and Metacritic. A month after the game's release, Microsoft annouced that Halo Wars had sold more than one million units worldwide since its launch. But the Ensemble Studio was already shutdown and its members had already formed new development teams.
Halo 4 is intended to be the first of a new trilogy of Halo series games, named the "Reclaimer Trilogy," and the first to be developed by 343 Industries. Master Chief will return as the main protagonist, and the AI Cortana returns as well.
Halo 4 will release worldwide today with the exclusion of Japan where the game will be released on Nov. 8. Read more about the Halo franchise here. Did you hear about the Halo 4 leak? Read more here. What do you think about Halo games being designed for other mediums and in other genres? What type of genre would like to see a Halo game based on? Comment in the section below...
Check out the "Halo 4 Gameplay Launch Trailer" below...
