“In 2008, Ensemble started designing a sprawling MMO in the Halo universe,” Peterson wrote in a recent post. “We called it Titan. It was set tens of thousands of years before the Halos fired — long before sentient life was wiped across the galaxy. I led the universe design: planetary histories, alien species, and so on.”
Peterson said players would have been able to play as the Forerunners — the ancient architects of the Halo rings — or as their adversaries. Strictly speaking, the Covenant as known in later Halo lore didn’t exist during the Forerunner epoch, so the team likely planned to retool familiar alien designs (for example, elites and grunts) into a distinct faction for the game.
According to Peterson, development was well under way: quest lines, homeworlds for multiple species, and extensive lore were already mapped out. Microsoft had modeled projected earnings of at least $1.1 billion, but the project was shelved when Don Mattrick realised his compensation was tied to games’ revenue within a three-year window.
“We estimated it would take 3.5 years to finish Titan properly,” Peterson added. “That exceeded Mattrick’s cut-off, so by closing Ensemble he avoided paying for an expensive studio for those three years. Titan didn’t matter to him — he prioritized the short-term numbers over the studio’s proven track record. Don began his career at EA with a reputation for ruthless cost-cutting, so perhaps that explains the decision.”
Another former Ensemble developer, Dusty Monk, has said the project was killed because Microsoft aimed to court a more casual audience and rejected “this very expensive, very long, and very protracted $90 million USD project” — comments he made about the situation in 2010. Read more.
Age of Empires later returned under World’s Edge, and several ex-Ensemble teams formed new studios. The Halo MMO never recovered, though a few alleged Titan screenshots are still circulating for those nostalgic to speculate. See the images.
Halo co-creator says Campaign Evolved “looks and feels genuine”: “It’s gorgeous in a way I wish we could have built it originally back in 2001”
Source: gamesradar.com
