Master Chief's absence from Halo Wars wasn't Bungie's fault, it was a move to make players "care about everybody else" in the RTS

After years of fans speculating the contrary, Halo Wars' lead designer has revealed that the lack of a certain series figurehead from the 2009 spin-off wasn't Bungie's fault after all.

"We didn’t want to use Master Chief," Ensemble Studios' Dave Pottinger tells VideoGamer Podcast of its executive decision, omitting the character from the RTS because the game "needed you to care about everybody else. We thought as soon as Master Chief shows up, that’s all anybody’s going to [care about]," he explains. This means theories that Bungie snubbed Ensemble by withholding the Master Chief license – and that the publisher objected to the game's existence in the first place – aren't true after all.

Spinning off a series renowned for delivering some of the best FPS games of all time, Pottinger stressed how the strategy elements made it integral for players to keep an open mind in Halo Wars, and how a lack of Master Chief made fans less inclined to prefer the Spartans by default. Still, the choice to leave him out entirely was not taken lightly. Ensemble "had these conversations seriously with people internally and externally," said Pottinger, which left the studio with a new question to parse: "How can it be an RTS? Clearly, Spartans are the best unit. Our challenge is making Spartans not the best unit, but making them an equal option [weighed against] the other units. That’s what a strategy game is.”

Having a Halo game without Master Chief sounds like a misstep off the cuff, but when Pottinger puts it that way, it makes perfect sense. Given the cult status the humble RTS has achieved since its initially tepid 2009 reception, and how its popularity sparked a sequel years later from Alien: Isolation developer Creative Assembly, it seems Ensemble's gamble paid off handsomely. You're off the hook this time, Bungie!

From Wars to Infinite, check out the best Halo games from across the Xbox series.