'Halo Wars 2' news: 'Large' patch arrives this week; developer confirms split-screen support for future 'Halo' shooters

Sheanne Aguila Monday, February 27, 2017

A promotional image for "Halo Wars 2." | 343 Industries

Following the official debut of "Halo Wars 2" last week, the game's developers assured fans that they will continue to support it with more updates and content.

Microsoft's first-person shooter finally arrived Tuesday, but that doesn't necessarily mean the developers' work is finished. In a blog post, 343 Industries promised to offer extra content and new updates to improve the game, along with the help of its co-developer Creative Assembly.

"Just because the game has launched doesn't mean the work is done. In fact, very far from it, as the Creative Assembly and 343 teams are hard at work on upcoming patches as well as future downloadable content," the dev team's statement reads.

Fans have noticed that "Halo Wars 2" was released without ranked multiplayer, but the developers promised that it will come soon. In terms of DLCs, 343 said gamers can expect new content to go live every third Wednesday of the month.

The arrival of new DLCs begins in March with Kinsano, a new leader. Additional campaign missions, units, and leaders are scheduled to be launched in the coming months. Updates meant to fix issues in the strategy game have also arrived. Although the first of these is now accessible, the 343 team announced that a "large patch" is slated to come out this week.

Meanwhile, the lack of split-screen support in "Halo 5" garnered huge backlash from the gaming community during its launch. 343 Industries head Bonnie Ross recently revealed that the studio had to sacrifice the feature to make way for the game's visual quality, but they are now trying to make improvements for future installments. "For any FPS going out forward, we will always have split-screen," Ross confirmed.

Going forward, Ross also stressed that the studio is taking a new direction in terms of storylines. "343 plans to keep the game stories simpler and use transmedia to tell the deeper narratives," she added.

Developed by 343 Industries and Creative Assembly, and published by Microsoft Studios, "Halo Wars 2" is available for Xbox One and Microsoft Windows PC.