CG Cinematics done by Blur Studio are interspersed at key points in the campaign, and they’re absolutely gorgeous to behold. It starts off strong, setting Atriox up as a terrifying and imposing villain. The story of Halo Wars 2 is told across 12 different chapters in the campaign. There, they encounter a splinter group called the Banished led by a massive brute named Atriox, who rebelled against the Covenant. They find themselves at The Ark, the giant forerunner facility responsible for building the Halos, and have no knowledge of how the Human-Covenant War ended. Halo Wars 2 picks up 28 years after the original, as the crew of the Spirit of Fire wakes up from the cryosleep they’ve been under as they drifted through space. The additions made in the sequel aren’t massive, besides unit changes, but Halo Wars 2 definitely feels like the purest way to experience what the original set up.
Halo Wars 2 continues that trend, but makes the interface work a bit better, and ramps up the speed and intensity for an experience that can be both stressful and thrilling. The real-time strategy genre has always been tough to adapt to a console, but the first Halo Wars found a way to scale back the experience and streamline it, along with a control scheme that worked fairly well.
