As Ensemble Studios closes its doors, Gamasutra's
final visit to the studio has unearthed information and pictures on the studio's prototypes and pitches, from
Nova through
Agent, the
Halo MMO and beyond.
As the full feature notes, the games that the Dallas-based, Microsoft-owned Ensemble has developed are very well-known, including the seminal
Age Of Empires RTS series and their final project,
Halo Wars.
But what most people don't know about is the company's undeveloped history of games that never saw the light of day.
Internally, the studio would prototype new game ideas. After that stage, the best results would be developed, then pitched to Microsoft, according to studio members.
They included: a fantasy-adventure RPG called
Sorcerer;
Nova, a "
Diablo in space" game; a pirate-themed take on
Diablo; a game called
Wrench; a
Ratchet & Clank-style platformer called
Bam.
Most detailed was a game called
Agent, with an art style and universe inspired by Pixar's The Incredibles, and using gameplay elements from
Tomb Raider. As the concept art shows, the game was instantly iconic and unique.
Another title was Graeme Devine's
Phoenix -- an RTS game featuring earthlings versus Martians in a War of the Worlds-style conflict. The game changed over time, and would eventually become something different entirely:
Halo Wars.
But the company was moving in a single direction: the
Halo MMO. It started in 1998, soon after
Ultima Online came out, when a designer named Ian Fischer started pitching a sci-fi MMO. He loved the genre, and felt it was underserved -- so development started on
Titan.
There were many iterations of the design, and then the relationship with Bungie began, and the license was incorporated in the game, subsequently codenamed
Orion.
The
full Gamasutra feature on the subject includes many previously unseen pieces of concept art from some of these projects. It also acts as a tribute to the veteran Dallas-based developer, which
was closed by parent company Microsoft, and has just shut its doors for the final time.
