Rumors spread that among other projects, the now defunct Ensemble Studios was also working on an Halo MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online Game).
Ensemble Studios closed its doors the other day, and from the various people, artists, programmers, etc., we’ve learned about some of the Studios canceled projects. The biggest one, the one that is at this minute burning up the interwebs was the revelation that in 2006-07 Ensemble Studios was working on a Halo MMO of some sort! It doesn’t look as if the project ever got pass mock-ups and an early prototype UI before it was internally killed.
Funny thing, this was at the time we reported that a Halo MMO was in the works. Since the rumors had been persistent from Halo 3 release, and when rumors and small tid-bits were leaked from Ensemble no one payed much attention. Microsoft has yet to say anything about the revelation, so as far as we know there is in development, somewhere, a Halo-themed MMO.
Gamasutra has several pictures up and even got some industry experts to break them down for us. If that's not enough, the 'Gone Is Gone' weblog has posted a Flickr gallery of the UI mockups and concept art for the "could have been" mmo.
On a personal note, and MMORPG (which is what Ensemble’s mockups look like) based on the Halo franchise doesn’t seem all that interesting to me. The series lends itself to action not grinding, though an MMOFPS would alleviate that.
