A total of seven cutscenes were made and they are disproportionately inserted into the campaign, with the majority either at the very beginning of the game or the end. Character interactions and story elements are limited to short mission briefings that take place before each level, and there are only few Blur-produced cutscenes.

Halo Wars 2’s story leaves much to be desired. Determined to prevent that, Cutter declares war on Atriox. A rogue Covenant group that rebelled during the fall of the Covenant, the Banished have taken over the Ark with the goal of exterminating the humans. Receiving a distress beacon, Cutter sends three Spartans to investigate where they are ambushed by Atriox, the Brute leader of the Banished. Awaking from cryosleep, the crew find themselves at the Ark, a Forerunner installation. The plot continues the story of the crew of the UNSC warship Spirit of Fire, Captain James Cutter and Professor Anders. Halo Wars 2 takes place 28 years after the events of Halo Wars and after the events of Halo 5: Guardians. Is Halo Wars 2 the resurgence of the console RTS or is this a genre that should stay PC exclusive? As a collaboration between Halo developer 343 Industries and Total War developer Creative Assembly, Halo Wars 2 is looking to bring the genre back to consoles. Now, almost a decade later, Microsoft has resurrected the series. Ensemble Studios were able to strike a balance between strategy and controller, but the game never received a follow-up due to Microsoft’s shuttering of the studio.

Then came Halo Wars, an RTS built from the ground-up to work on the Xbox 360. The limited buttons on the controllers ended up hurting many of the serious efforts and the effort was eventually abandoned. The seventh-generation of consoles felt like a proving ground for the strategy genre as developers attempted to get their games working on the hardware.

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