Halo Wars 2

Halo: Combat Evolved (2001) helped ‘solve’ FPS on console. Halo Wars 1 & 2 attempt to do the same with the RTS genre.

Role

Junior UI artist

UI, UX, animations

Responsibilities

Visual design, 2D asset creation, conceptual UI, UX wireframes and flows

When/How/Where

2015-2016

Create Assembly, UK

Consoles & PC

Visual Design

Halo 4 (2012) had released just a few years before, bringing a new visual direction to the franchise. Halo Wars 2 (2016) was an opportunity to refine the direction of Halo even further. We spent a lot of time balancing new visual solutions against the tried and tested.

Asset creation

Exploring 2D rendered solutions, as well as more typical UI iconography. I spent a lot of time on our “Blitz” cards, figuring out how to visually solve how card-game fundamentals could be reconciled with an already tight control scheme.

In-game UI

Halo Wars 2 was one of my first experiences working on a large-scale game, and an incredibly formative one.

As a junior designer, I got to explore how a well-established visual language like Halo could be adapted to a very different kind of game. Designing for an RTS meant constantly balancing information density, readability and familiarity, while making an experience built around mouse and keyboard feel at home on a controller.

Looking back, there are plenty of things I would approach differently today, but many of the fundamental challenges like simplifying complexity, designing within constraints and finding the right balance between function and character are ones I still work with today.

I still adore Halo and hope to revisit the potential that still lies undiscovered in the francise.

Check out my other stuff