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]

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]

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]

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.

Exclusive: Ensemble Studios' Canceled Project Was Halo MMO [Gamasutra]