The original Halo is still far and away the best entry in the series. Originally intended to be a real-time strategy game for the Mac, Halo underwent a huge number of changes during its development. The purchase of Halo and Bungie proved to be the boost Microsoft needed to get the Xbox console off the ground.
Did you know that at one stage, Bungie was owned by Rockstar? They released only one game together before Bungie was snapped up by Microsoft, a rather interesting third person shooter called Oni. To say Oni was heavily influenced by Ghost in the Shell is an understatement, but its mix of melee combat and shooting action didn’t come together quite as well as hoped.
Before Bungie was forced into its singular Halo focus, they made other games. One such game was Myth: The Fallen Lords, an ultra gory real-time strategy game. Myth was different to most RTS games of the day in that it didn’t focus on resource collecting and base building – it was all about trying to get through missions with the least number of casualties by using advanced formation tactics and taking full advantage of the game’s rich physics system.
