Slashdot Mirror
Ensemble Studios' Canceled Project Was Halo MMO
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.
The funny thing is all the big FPS games that came before it that heralded the real dawn of FPS multiplayer. Quake II, Unreal then Unreal Tournament, Half Life, Counter-Strike just to name some of the big ones off the top of my head.
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 and mechanics right.... that's the money-shot right there.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
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 clever J.K. Rowling was to invent all those trolls and things.