The Halo MMO That Wasn't?

With Halo Wars developer Ensemble Studios soon closing its doors, it would seem that some of its secrets are leaking out. Gamasutra has unearthed some mock screenshots and concept art that seem to suggest the strategy house was working on a Halo MMO at one point. The shots, which there are now a full Flickr gallery of, originally came from an artist's online portfolio that was linked to the official Ensemble website--not exactly hard evidence, though rumors from a 2006 Game Informer about an Ensemble-developed Halo MMO, Ensemble job listings for an MMO project from 2006, and suggestive comments from Ensemble's Bruce Shelley and Microsoft's Phil Spencer further corroborate the story.

Gamasutra also called in the pros from Massively.com to break down a few of the screens, which seem to suggest a game UI that, unsurprisingly, was taking a lot of its cues from World of Warcraft. Microsoft and Ensemble have yet to comment on the authenticity of the shots, and the sourcing is a little sketchy, but all of the shots are highly evocative of the Halo aesthetic even when they're not canonical, and the sheer volume of concept art and mock-ups suggests they're legit.

On a personal note, I'm not the world's biggest Halo fan, but I think some of this character stuff looks sick as hell. The environments don't really pop, but I like the way some of them extrapolate from the core Halo design. Mostly, though, I'd just really like to see a non-fantasy MMO get a real foothold, and aside from Starcraft, Halo is probably the best sci-fi candidate. It's a shame that this stuff is probably dead in the water, though you can be sure that this won't be the last time Microsoft considers turning its wildly popular FPS into some recurring monthly payments.