Alien Isolation Team Working on Halo Wars 2

The team that made The Creative Assembly's 2014 hit Alien Isolation is now working on Halo Wars 2, which was announced earlier this week at gamescom during Microsoft's press conference.

Despite being best known for its grand strategy series Total War, studio head Tim Heaton told MCV that the upcoming game won't simply be Total War: Halo.

The Creative Assembly's team is using the original Halo Wars from defunct studio Ensemble, with Halo series steward 343 Industries providing input. 

“There’s loads of pressure,” Heaton commented. “We are absolutely using Halo Wars as a starting point. This isn’t going to be a Total War: Halo kind of game – this is Halo Wars taken to the next stage.

“We really rated Halo Wars. It’s something we can add to and build on. As we’re learning about the universe, we’ve been working closely with 343 Industries, and that’s been a really interesting learning experience.” 

The Creative Assembly core PC team is currently working on Total War: Warhammer, leaving Halo Wars 2 duties to the Alien Isolation team which, Heaton added, is perfect. 

“We’ve crafted the Halo Wars team, but primarily we are able to use the Alien: Isolation developers,” he continued. “They’re our console-ready team. It’s the perfect combination: we have great strategy knowledge, great PC knowledge and now great console knowledge because of Alien.”

Heaton added that it is possible the Total War series could come to console in some form and noted that the PS4 and Xbox One have performed significantly better than some expected them to. 

Halo Wars 2 is coming to Xbox One and Windows PCs in 2016.