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Ensemble Studios' Canceled Project Was Halo MMO
Posted by
Soulskill
on Tue Sep 23, 2008 08:14 PM
from the best-of-both-cash-cows dept.
from the best-of-both-cash-cows dept.
simoniker writes "Following the recent announcement that Microsoft-owned Age Of Empires creator Ensemble Studios would close after the completion of Halo Wars, Gamasutra has discovered that a now-canceled Halo MMO was in development at the studio, unearthing prototype UI and level screenshots of the Ensemble-developed project. The prototype art, which was at one point made available on an Ensemble-linked online artist portfolio website, further confirms previous rumors that the studio was working on an MMO based on the Bungie-created sci-fi franchise."
We discussed the future closing of Ensemble Studios a couple weeks ago. The set of pictures which seem to be screenshots and graphic models from the canceled Halo MMO has been posted on Flickr. In other Halo news, Bungie may be teasing the announcement of the next game on their website.
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Microsoft To Close <em>Halo Wars</em> Studio 77 comments
Shacknews reports that Ensemble Studios, developer of the Age of Empires series, will be shut down by Microsoft Game Studios (MGS) as soon as the upcoming Halo Wars title is complete. Microsoft execs said parts the team would continue to work with MGS. Halo Wars is scheduled for early 2009, and Eurogamer took a look at the Halo-styled RTS game last month.
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Bad News for Halo Wars? (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps Halo Wars isn't living up to the hype and expectations and Microsoft is looking to cut there losses. On the other hand, the AoE series was always excellent, so that would be pretty surprising.
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Maybe it's just me. But I never thought Halo had any potential to branch out into all these games they're trying to make it into. The entire series revolves around the life and times of Master Chief. Once you leave that it's pretty much as generic as carbon copy sci-fi shooters get (and it was pretty generic to begin with). I know they said the same thing about Super Mario (or at least for the sake of this argument they did) but in the case of those games all the characters weren't a bunch of space marines
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The ringworld idea was executed very well, and everything tied together to make a really fun game, great multiplay and good coop.
When they tried to engineer fun is one of the many mistakes. Halo 2 had alot of problems too.
The biggest mistake I think was not stopping.
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Well, the original version of Halo (pre-Microsoft) was to be a MMO game first and foremost, and Apple used to demo it at Mac events. Then Microsoft bought up Bungie, nerfed Oni and killed all development on Halo that wasn't XBox-relevant.
Kinda sad, really, that the dream of MMO Halo was never realised. The ringworld would have made an interesting battleground.
WoW UI (Score:2, Interesting)
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It does, but 90% of all MMORPG's coming out all look like they ripped off the WoW UI. That's not terrible though. There are things that could be better about WoW's UI, but overall it's a pretty good basic system for controlling a character in such a world.
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Look at Warhammer Online's UI as an example.
Microsoft figured that... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft figured that... (Score:4, Funny)
Do we "need" any games? GODYESWHATAMITHINKING!?! Uh sorry.
Parent
And nothing of value was lost.. (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:And nothing of value was lost.. (Score:5, Funny)
I prefer to go past the movie cliches and nuke my karma.
By the way, have you heard of the GNAA?
Parent
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Don't forget that it seemed to borrow liberally from Half Life, but it didn't have nearly as good of a story as Half Life, nor the level design. Yet Halo seems to be unfairly credited as this innovative thing. In reality, Halo had many features cut when it was first moved from the Mac to the XBox and wasn't nearly the game that was promised. For many people however, it was their first experience at multi-player FPS as opposed to just playing against the computer. That multi-player experience is what so
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Yet NONE of those tried to make a MMO out of it. I dare say that most of the developers realized (quite rightly) that the stuff that generally makes for a good FPS has nothing to do with a good MMO. Making up the story/universe in an MMO is the easy part. Getting the gameplay
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Halo is without any doubt in my mind, the most over-rated game of all time...
You've obviously never heard of Starcraft. Let me tell you about it. Starcraft was an RTS which is consistently touted as being the greatest RTS ever made, when, in fact, it did absolutely nothing special. It had a good story, that was it. Yet its fanboys will still tell you that it was the greatest RTS ever crafted (and that it wasn't just "Warcraft in space", which it most certainly was). That, my friend, is almost the very definition of "most over-rated game of all time".
Say what you want about Halo (and
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but it's a fun game with an excellent story,
Well that's most definitely your opinion, thanks to the internet we all get to share ours, I disagree good sir, very much - and so be it, glad you enjoyed it
but at least I have yet to hear anyone, even fanboys, proclaim it to be the best FPS of all time.
Are we using the same internet? I'm not sure that we are,...?
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Are we using the same internet? I'm not sure that we are,...?
Sure? I mean, it seems plausible to me, let's go with it. I specifically didn't deny the possibility that such claims could exist toward Halo, but I seriously have yet to hear anyone proclaim it to be the best FPS of all time. In fact, given the gamers I've interacted with on the intertubes, I wouldn't be willing to stake a claim that there's any consensus at all as to what the best FPS of all time is. Every other genre seems to have one or two favorites, but FPS has always seemed to be rather fractured to
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Starcraft single player was average, and the multiplayer was good.
Brood wars, was average single player, but had the perfect blend for multiplayer. balanced and diverse, with fast paced 5minute games and hour long marathons all possible. It requires the perfect blend of skill, macro strategy and micro (too much mirco for me but meh) and the game has had more patches then a typical MMO. Blizzard supports its games long after they are released and keeps the players happy.
It really is a great game, that has ag
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Total Annihilation was better!
(Sorry, still a little bitter over that one :-p)
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Blizzard doesn't do "innovative", they do "right". Starcraft wasn't something terribly new (though RTSes didn't have such diverse factions before it) but it was so well made it was simply better than the competition. If you look at (semi-recent) Blizzard games that's how they all go, not very innovative but very well done and always outperforming the competition. And what they do best is mass-market appeal. There are always the niche games with their fans that scoff at the lack of depth in the mainstream ga
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Meh, Kratos feels like another one of those forced coolness characters like Dante (the DMC3 intro was so fucking cheesy...). Better than those emo suckers that seem to be all the rage as heroes these days but not by much.
Re:And nothing of value was lost.. (Score:5, Interesting)
The Halo-hype is best understood once you look at its historical context. Yes it wasn't the first ever FPS, not the first FPS with an immersive plot (at least one other posting here compares it to Half Life, something I immediatley recognised when playing it for the first time). What it was, however, was the first FPS that Console players were drawn to en-masse (see below for N64 goldeney note).
The simple fact of the matter was that prior to Halo mouse + keyboard was the only way to play an FPS with any degree of satisfaction, to the extent that Quake III for Dreamcast practically required you to buy these too. FPS's were very big on the PC platform at the turn of the century but had had a very rough time being accepted on the consoles for both this and cultural reasons (the same problem was faced by point and click management-em-ups like Civilisation, for example). Being an FPS nut at the time I found it very hard to get into the various console FPS's, include ports like Quake II on the PSX.
Most of the time this is because they got the controller setup fundamentally wrong and/or wouldn't let you configure your own. Most glaringly they insisted on having Forward,Back and yaw on the left stick, very very very rarely (if ever) were you afforded Forward, Back and strafe on one stick with pitch and yaw on the other. Often (and this is true for Doom on the GBA for example, I'd waited years for hand held Doom to be sorely dissapointed!) strafe was bunged on the shoulder buttons because the developers didn't know just how important they were. Halo got the controller config exactly spot on: you could effectively circle-strafe, and as such it became the first Console FPS that anyone could actually play.
The next major flaw was auto-aim, obvious to any mouser is the ability to aim in a fraction of a second to any pitch/yaw point around you and get a nice headshot, simply impossible on a console. Past FPS's usually had it take you an hour to line up a shot, drastically slowing things down and stunting the potential gameplay as a result. Halo got the autoaim spot on - it's so cunning you might never notice it's there - this combined with the ability to strafe allowed proper battles with hoards of baddies for the first time.
The offshoot of all of the above is that Halo was console gaming's Doom moment - N64's Goldeneye therefore might be similarly married up to Wolfenstein 3D. The half life (pun intended) of Doom has been immense, with an active community almost 15 years on, myself semi-inclulded. This is what we're seeing on the Consoles now, it looks so strange to us fogeys here, wishing the console kiddies would get off our lawns because whilst we can see that the game is well put together and the plot well executed we've seen it all before in one guise or another, but those "console kiddies" (apologies to those who are consolers but not kiddies anymore!) had not seen it before making it all new and exiting to them. Even though by our reckoning they're 15 years late.
Parent
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The Halo-hype is best understood once you look at its historical context. Yes it wasn't the first ever FPS, not the first FPS with an immersive plot (at least one other posting here compares it to Half Life, something I immediatley recognised when playing it for the first time). What it was, however, was the first FPS that Console players were drawn to en-masse.
I'll give you that.
Most of the time this is because they got the controller setup fundamentally wrong and/or wouldn't let you configure your own. Most glaringly they insisted on having Forward,Back and yaw on the left stick, very very very rarely (if ever) were you afforded Forward, Back and strafe on one stick with pitch and yaw on the other. Often (and this is true for Doom on the GBA for example, I'd waited years for hand held Doom to be sorely dissapointed!) strafe was bunged on the shoulder buttons because the developers didn't know just how important they were. Halo got the controller config exactly spot on: you could effectively circle-strafe, and as such it became the first Console FPS that anyone could actually play.
No, no, no, no. Timesplitters was released for the PS2 as a launch title over a year before Halo 1. Halo's controls are directly ripped from this. TS also had totally configurable controls, again, a year before Halo. Also, despite TS essentially being a parody of every genre of FPS (and indeed action film) ever, it manages to have more innovation than Halo has in it's exoskeleton's little finger.
Honestly, the credit Halo gets for innovation... It's like telling a load of Tolkien fans how
Just off the top of my head... (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't think a Halo MMO would be feasible. Its FPS. Hellgate failure anyone? (And i had high hopes for that one) with an EPIC main character which CAN be done, Conan does a half decent job of it but you can't let everyone play a spartan.
In Conan you are a warrior just like everyone else. You are better than common warriors in theory but everyone has the same potential that you do. The halo universe is extremely unbalanced. There are only X number of spartans, certainly not enough to populate an MMO. And playing Halo MMO as a marine would be more of a Team Fortress with experience and items type game. Not a bad idea for a game, but an idea that doesn't fit the Halo universe at all.
I also can't see the fans of the Halo gameplay appreciating roll-to-hit combat, nor do I see typical MMO players taking to the twitch and adrenalin style of play that would cater to the FPS gamers. You will end up alienating one full half of the group a Halo MMO appeal to.
There are exceptions to each rule (I like both styles of play myself and I really enjoy the story to Halo) but you have to appeal to a very large group of people to keep an MMO going. It was a smart decision to cancel the project and I appreciate the fact that they were willing to forgo some quick easy cash in order to work on something else.
out of my ass... (Score:2)
You obviously know alot about MMO gaming but I think your conclusions are based on massive (heh) assumptions about the gameplay and how they were going to integrate this game into the Halo universe.
You talk about there "not being enough spartans..." and other limitations you foresee based on the Halo FPS storyline. Fact is, the game 'writers' could dream up any scenario they wanted to explain why there were more units. A post-apocalyptic alternate universe for example. The doors are wide open.
As far as p
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whoa...*steps back slowly trying not to make sudden moves*
I give, I give...
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no kidding! I always get my ass handed to me in that DLC map...the one that's basically a warehouse with shipping containers all around...
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I wouldn't think a Halo MMO would be feasible. Its FPS. Hellgate failure anyone? (And i had high hopes for that one) with an EPIC main character which CAN be done, Conan does a half decent job of it but you can't let everyone play a spartan.
In Conan you are a warrior just like everyone else. You are better than common warriors in theory but everyone has the same potential that you do. The halo universe is extremely unbalanced. There are only X number of spartans, certainly not enough to populate an MMO. And playing Halo MMO as a marine would be more of a Team Fortress with experience and items type game. Not a bad idea for a game, but an idea that doesn't fit the Halo universe at all.
I also can't see the fans of the Halo gameplay appreciating roll-to-hit combat, nor do I see typical MMO players taking to the twitch and adrenalin style of play that would cater to the FPS gamers. You will end up alienating one full half of the group a Halo MMO appeal to.
There are exceptions to each rule (I like both styles of play myself and I really enjoy the story to Halo) but you have to appeal to a very large group of people to keep an MMO going. It was a smart decision to cancel the project and I appreciate the fact that they were willing to forgo some quick easy cash in order to work on something else.
They should have made it like Planetside or WWII Online. An MMO can be an FPS too.
It worked for COH / COV (Score:2)
Well, everyone being "super" worked perfectly fine for COH / COV.
The "normal" people in the COH / COV universe are the minions, the victims, etc. The civillians don't even have a level, in fact.
According to Statesman's intentions at one point, it would take about 3 minions _and_ a lieutenant to be a 50%-50% fight against a player. You know, better have an inspiration (potion) or two, if it starts going downhill. Bosses are nastier, but realistically only elite bosses are any danger to a hero. I've soloed el
So I take it... (Score:2)
...you never played Planetside? That worked just fine. Something like that with the Halo universe would be equally pretty damn cool.
MMOs don't just have to be about farming the same mob over and over with a wizard or whatever.
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Red Versus... um... (Score:2)
This is most unfortunate. Never would there have been a more appropriate place to call someone a team-killing fucktard [wikiquote.org].
OT. but (Score:2)
Can we have the Firefly MMO yet please?
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I remember reading about someone licensing a Multiverse engine and the Firefly property about 4 years back, and then never hearing about it again, but then tons and tons of MMOs were canceled in droves around that time.
http://www.multiverse.net/press/pr20080902buffy.jsp?cid=6&scid=9 [multiverse.net]
According to that fairly recent press release, Firefly is "delayed".
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On the one hand... (Score:2)
Wow, would this be a craptastic game, and the community would just be horrid.
On the other hand, it'd bleed off a lot of retards from other MMO's, so it's too bad it got canned.
I'm still waiting for Pimps at Sea! (Score:3)
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Frog Blast the Ventcore, indeed.
Want some inspiration and satisfaction? Look in the internet archive, say March 2003, for marathon.com [archive.org]
Tagged bitch. We were bungie fans. Posterity.
It was either that or make it flash 'no blood for oil' every 100th visit... ;)
Jason Jones is too good for Microsoft (Score:2)
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I really, *really* do not want to know how you are so sure of that.
Generic the MMO, more like (Score:2)
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Actually, I'm glad that you bought up the subject of Mechwarrior because I thoroughly enjoyed Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance and won't sound like I'm trolling when I say that I really don't get the big hoohah about Halo.
No, I don't own a console, just a PC and I did play Halo I right through to the end. Yes, it was quite pretty but the AI sucked, particularly for the troops who were on your side trying to drive vehicles through rocks with you manning a gun turret, plus the tiny cackling aliens gave it a feel of "
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People could've said the same about WoW but WoW still managed to conjure up about an extra 7million players that weren't in the MMO market before it's arrival.
More and more people are coming online than ever before and the market is only increasing for MMOs.