Ensemble of course was the muscle behind a Halo MMO that was greenlighted and then scrapped sometime last year. Cole's pictures (two are on his site) are titled "Halo Universe City," and in his description, Cole capitalizes "Halo Universe" a second time. Could have been a working title of the game. Joystiq also points out it could have been "Universe City." Which itself could have been a placeholder name. Who knows.

Of course it all doesn't matter. The project is kaput. But the pictures are pretty, and tell us a little more about an evolution of this franchise not meant to be. For now.

Halo Project - City Designs [Dylan Cole, via Joystiq]

David Rippy - who is now in charge of Bonfire Studios, and leading a team of other ex-Ensemble employees - says the former Age of Empires developer went down because it had been pigeon-holed as an RTS specialist.

With the cost of creating games so high, studios are almost forced to diversify across platforms. Aside from the financial risk of sticking to one platform or one genre, you also risk being pigeonholed in the industry.

Ensemble was kind of a victim of its own success as an RTS shop. As hard as we tried, we were never able to have one of our non-RTS prototypes greenlit, largely because we were 'the RTS guys'.

I'd like to sympathise, but really, Relic and Creative Assembly seem to be doing OK.

Ensemble Studios a "victim of its own success" - Bonfire [GI.biz]

There's some spectacular stuff here, worthy of desktop wallpapering, visual inspiration for many of the game's gorgeous cut scenes. Perhaps it's time for a point and click Halo Adventures to really breathe some exploitation into the series. What's that you say? "Jesus Christ, no"?

In Halo Wars, gamers return to the beloved Xbox franchise to explore its early days in a real-time strategy title by Ensemble Studios. The game promises the chance to control not one Master Chief, but an army of marines, Spartans, Warthogs and Scorpions.

Can Halo Wars ride on the success of its lineage and, with the help of some of the best real-time strategy developers in the business, do for strategy what the original title did for shooters?

Loved
Essence of Halo: The biggest selling point for this strategy game is its setting, characters and story. Set in the Halo universe, Halo Wars delivers across the board on everything a Halo fan could want, from a tightly paced plot, to memorable characters, to the rush of commanding a squad of Spartans

Cut Scenes: One of the best parts of this game are the cut scenes. Delivered in amazing detail with highly polished graphics, there's enough there to keep you captivated throughout the single player campaign.

Graphics: The cut scenes are spectacular, but the gameplay graphics are just as adept at delivering an eye-catching experience. Units from the UNSC, Covenant and Flood are all meticulously detailed and the backdrops vary just enough to keep things interesting.

Eclectic Missions: Instead of having gamers run through a familiar gauntlet of control points and forward bases, Halo Wars relies heavily on the story to create an interesting selection of missions on multiple settings, from ship hulls, to infested planets. You even have to solve a puzzle in one.

Strategic Strategy: The smartest thing that Ensemble Studios did in making Halo Wars was realizing the limitations of playing a strategy game on a console. You don't have a keyboard of hot keys, or a mouse to zip around the map with. So the game limits the size of maps, units and pushes things to the point of being hard to manage, but not frustrating.

Hated
Simplistic: While creating a strategy game too complex for console controls would have killed Halo Wars, making it a tad too simple means hardcore strategy fans will at best find this game a brief amusement. Gamers new to the genre might find it a good introduction to strategy.

No Hot Keys: While Ensemble Studios couldn't include keyboard controls in the game, it would have been nice for them to come up with a better system for group selecting and saving to buttons. As it stands, you can only really jump between types of units or local and all units. Something that severely hampers the experience.

Camera Issues: The camera works relatively well, though I noticed that it got hung up on scenery around the border of maps at times. My biggest complaint, though, is that the zoom doesn't zoom enough. There were plenty of times when I wanted to really zoom in and watch a Spartan beat down a bad guy and steal his vehicle, but the zoom doesn't offer that level of detail.

Not Many Units: There really aren't many units to pick from in the game. In the single player this isn't that evident, but once you start slugging it out with real people online you start to realize that there's not much to choose from in this game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Limited Multiplayer: Real-time strategy games, like first-person shooters, live and die in multiplayer gaming. After you get through the game's 14 single-player levels, that's the only reason you'll still play it. But there's just not much there. No multiplayer Flood. No massive battles. Not much of a map selection.

I enjoyed my time with Halo Wars, it was just too short for a game that I can't see myself playing much online. Perhaps gamers would have been better served if this iteration of Halo Wars included more campaigns, played from the perspective of the Covenant and Flood, and less multiplayer.

It's odd, being a long-time fan of both strategy games and Ensemble Studios, to love the single-player experience of a game they made, but feel so flat about the multiplayer sessions. Halo Wars is a fun ride, an action strategy game that delivers on everything but, perhaps, where it needs to deliver most to succeed: multiplayer gaming.

Halo Wars was developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360. It will be released on March 3, for $60. Played single player campaign to completion, played multiple battles on Xbox Live against other players.

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Days after Ensemble co-founder Tony Goodman announced the formation of Robot Entertainment, former management team members of Ensemble announce Bonfire Studios, a new development house based in Dallas. Like Robot, Bonfire is currently working on developing a new intellectual property. They just don't have to worry about maintaining support for Halo Wars and the Age of Empires community at the same time. Freedom!

"Ensemble had an incredible group of highly talented people and the companies coming out of it are really made up of the best of the best. Ensemble was one of the few studios with two A-teams," said David Rippy, president and CEO of Bonfire Studios. "We are already working on an original IP that we'll start talking about in the next few months."

It should be interesting to see what sort of original properties are produced at both Robot Entertainment and Bonfire. I wonder which one is good and which one is evil?

Seeing the units in Halo Wars up close and personal like this, even a moderate Halo fan like myself can't help but get a little excited, especially at the prospect of finally getting to see whole squads of Spartans in action. I especially like the allusion that campaign lead Jerome Jones makes regarding controlling a squad of Spartans versus controlling the ultimate Spartan, Master Chief.

It's be like if Batman was here now, and you heard stories that there used to be twenty Batmans, and that was when they could really kick ass.

Yes, Master Chief is the Batman of the future.

The deal cut between Twentieth Century Fox Licensing and Merchandising, which handles licensing for the teen-rated game, and MEGA Brands will see the toy maker developing construction toy sets based on the key characters and vehicles of Halo Wars under the Mega Bloks name.

The blocks are due out this summer.

“We’re excited to have this exclusive opportunity to partner with Microsoft and 20th Century Fox Licensing & Merchandising and build on the immense success of the Halo franchise,” said Vic Bertrand, Chief Innovation Officer of MEGA Brands. “We look forward to bringing the iconic characters and vehicles of the video game to life through Mega Bloks.”

“We consider MEGA brands to be one of the premiere leaders in the constructible toys and games category. Their reputation for creativity and innovation is inspiring and we look forward to seeing it applied to the legendary Halo franchise,” noted Michael Peikoff, Senior-Vice President U.S. Licensing, Twentieth Century Fox Licensing and Merchandising.

Not the absence of Microsoft, Ensemble or Bungie quotes.

What's next Grand Theft Auto Tonka Toys?

What they found was that the game has a long, long history. Indeed, it began before Halo, as a sci-fi project by the name of Titan, an MMO inspired by Ultima Online. Then, when Ensemble were brought into the Microsoft fold, the Halo license "was incorporated in the game", and the project's name was changed to Orion.

Apparently, "everyone at Ensemble expected this MMO to be the new focus of the company", and work even began on a new building to house the dev team. Down the road, however, "work on the new building stopped", and it wasn't much longer until Microsoft closed down the entire studio. A suggestion that the cancellation of Orion led to the studio's demise, perhaps?

Moving on from Halo, a number of other unreleased projects came to light as concept art and design documents were packed away. There was a "fantasy-adventure RPG", a "Diablo in space" game, a "pirate-themed take on Diablo", a "Ratchet & Clank-style platformer" and a cartoony platformer called "Agent".

Interestingly, one more older project was unveiled: "Phoenix", an RTS pitting humans vs martians that "changed over time" to become Halo Wars.

The full report - including some concept art for both Orion and Agent - below.

Ensemble Studios: The Last Tour [Gamasutra]

As Jason Pace, Halo Wars lead producer and MGS Halo franchise overseer, points out, Ensemble is forming a new company and will help support the game with bug patches and whatnot.

When asked about a sequel, Pace adds that he was "very excited" about all the potential. Supposedly "dozens and dozens" of game features did not make the final cut. "And those kind of things," says Pace, "without mentioning anything specific, are always the kinds of things that we would be looking at to enhance the game moving forward."

Microsoft, he says, is interested in keeping its relationship with the new Ensemble studio. Nothing is finalized, however.

"I can tell you right now that we are really interested in continuing our relationship with Ensemble [the new studio]. We don't have anything finalized that I can discuss, but certainly that is something we'd love to continue if possible," said Pace.

"Obviously what's happened with Ensemble has presented a new set of circumstances for us to think about. But that certainly hasn't altered what we'd like to do in the future with the title at all."

Ensemble involved in Halo Wars' future News [Eurogamer]

He writes: "My expectation is that this is the final ES blog that I will write. I have enjoyed pulling it together for the past several years and sharing with you what I could about the inside workings of a game studio. It was a pleasure and a privilege to showcase the work and fun side of our group....

On behalf of everyone at ES, past and present, thanks for your support over the years. Your feedback on our games made the next version better. Buying legitimate copies made it possible for us to keep making them. Thanks also to those who wrote us to express regrets about the end of our studio and even the end of this blog."

Read the post in full in the link below.

Goodbye and Thanks [Ensemble Studios via GameFocus]

What, according to the box, comprises the "best" of the Halo franchise? Ensemble Studios' Halo Wars and Bungie's Halo 3, apparently. They'll be stuffed into the collector-friendly box — that we'll assume has greater color depth in person — that also contains an Xbox 360 "Pro" model, one wireless controller and "1 month Xbox Live Silver."

The next entry in a long line of European hardware bundle releases is priced at about $350 USD. No word yet on plans for this little package landing on other shores.

Xbox 360 Basenhet - Pro HDMI Version (Inkl. 60GB Hårddisk) - Best of Halo Edition [Webhallen via TeamXbox]

Coming in the form of "field manuals", the guides - one for the UNSC, one for the Covenant - show what Ensemble are saying is every constructible unit and building in the game (special, mission-specific ones notwithstanding).

If you're wondering where the Brutes and/or Elites are, they come free with the grunts. You get one of either commanding a squad of the little guys.

UNSC Field Manual [Ensemble]
Covenant Field Manual [Ensemble, via X3F]

The result is the four-years-in-development Halo Wars, the last title from Ensemble. Microsoft is closing the Texas-based studio early next year. To create the title, Ensemble built Halo Wars from the ground up, setting out to make a RTS that pleases RTS players and Halo players.

The studio discovered that many Halo players already had RTS playing experience. But there were obvious differences. According to Ensemble's Graeme Devine:

It seemed like a really funny thing to get out of the control test, but they all would come up and say, "This trigger needs to throw grenades!" Over and over and over again, that was direct feedback — "We need to be able to throw grenades!" So, you can throw grenades now.

Ensemble actually ended up with a new goal: Reach Halo players who have never played a RTS before. Good thing the studio made grenade throwing possible.

Interview: How Ensemble Gets Halo Fans To Appreciate Halo Wars [GameSetWatch]

Ensemble has been wanting to make an MMO for a long time. That was in production for a long time. The Halo IP was a great IP to launch an MMO with. Microsoft... hasn't had the best track record with those.

And we worked on it for a long time—we had staffed up an almost-40 person team. And then there was some reorganization at Microsoft, and the new bosses thought it wasn't the best idea anymore. It had actually been green-lit, and then it got cancelled after that.

So it's the "new bosses' fault"? Sounds like the smartest move Don Mattrick's made to date.

Age of Empires Dev Ensemble Speaks Out on Studio Closure, Microsoft, and the Cancelled Halo MMO [Shacknews]

We know, Halo Wars' cinematics look great, but what we really needed to see was how the thing worked. This vid shows how it works. There's a "circle menu" that drives most of the game's commands, and the whole thing looks it just might avoid being a total disaster.

Oh, and stick around til the end to see Ensemble's take on Flood civic planning.

Halo Wars Assistant Producer Bill Jackson told me that the key team members are all staying on board to finish up Halo Wars and get it out the door, but that all is not doom and gloom for the developers once the game wraps.

He said to expect news from the group, good news. Let's hope they land on their feet in the near future as a new studio, perhaps one that can one day be bought up by Microsoft Game Studios. Oh, to dream.

The work that those studios are doing [is] incredibly important to MGS. For Rare, this will be their fifth game in the first three years of the Xbox 360 - that's crazy. Two launch games? What studio on the planet signs up for two launch games? That's just crazy. So the productivity and effort in those two studios is just great to see.

About the Microsoft-owned Lionhead, Spencer says there are "no plans" for a Bungie or Ensemble-type reorganization with Microsoft Game Studios, adding "the next Lionhead game is definitely an MGS game". What about the game after that?

Phil Spencer - Part Two [Games Industry]

The artwork we showed you yesterday focused on specific character class designs, weapons and vehicles, but new images, which appear to be from the same Halo MMO project, offer a broader, more conceptual look at "Orion."

While the previous concepts have found more derision than we were expecting, these may appeal more to the Halo-loving audience, borrowing already familiar elements and reinterpreting them to fit into the MMO mold.

Thanks, Smarter!

Thanks to one of our snoopiest readers Jeff, we have an in-depth look at dozens of pieces of concept art from "Orion", much of which provides fascinating insight into how the game was originally intended to look, from its many character types to creatures to vehicles to cleavage-exposing Spartan armor.

Some of our favorite pieces include the Grackle vehicle, a UNSC vs. the Convenant comparison line-up and possible character mounts.

On the fun side, we like the dual-gender Spartan aesthetics and would have liked to see how Forerunners Next Top Model would have been implemented.

We even get a look at the proposed character progression for the UNSC's "Assault" class from noob to level 60. And those Greys? Possibly even cuter than Final Fantasy XI's Tarutaru.

We're continuing to dissect some of the early character artwork to learn more about how "Orion" would have played. It appears the in-game look of the MMO is a noticeable deviation from the concept art and we hope that some of this unused material reappears elsewhere in future Halo titles.

Everyone at our studio was shocked, and I think remains very disappointed that this is going to happen. I believe we thought we were immune to shut-down talk because our published games have done so well and have been so profitable. Plus we felt we had built a really stable (low-turnover), talented, hard-working, and creative team, which is not easy to do. We thought we were among the best studios in the world, and that may be true, but we don’t fit in the future plans of MGS as an internal studio so we’re out.

Shelley also reveals that Ensemble was, per capita, the most expensive first-party studio Microsoft were running, and that the studio's plans for a new office building perhaps played a small part in the decision to shutter them as well. Most interesting/sad, however, is the revelation by the long-time PC gaming God that while the majority of the Ensemble brains trust will be forming a new studio once work is done on Halo Wars, Shelley says "I do not expect to be part of the new company formed after ES is shut down".

Ensemble Studios Closing [Ensemble, thanks Dave!]