Cancelled Halo MMOG Details

IncGamers excerpts an upcoming interview with Dusty Monk, founder of Windstorm Studios, who tells the tale of the Halo MMOG he worked on from 2004-2007 as a member of Microsoft's Ensemble Studios. Codenamed "Titan," the game was to have competed directly with World of Warcraft. "You have to remember that Ensemble came from a standpoint of being really good at competing against Blizzard Entertainment," Monk says, alluding to the competition between the Warcraft series and the Age of Empires series. "We had a pretty good history of knowing the types of stuff that Blizzard put into their games to make them really successful, and the kinds of things we'd need to put into an MMO to compete against Blizzard." He describes elements of the game that were adopted by other projects after the game was cancelled, and also explains the cancellation itself: "So part of this changing of the guard at Microsoft came along with the changing of the attitude to this very expensive, very long and very protacted [sic] $90 million USD project we were working on, which was Titan. To cut a long story short, Titan was closed down."
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Re: Cancelled Halo MMOG Details
Apr 13, 2010, 03:41
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Re: Cancelled Halo MMOG Details Apr 13, 2010, 03:41
Apr 13, 2010, 03:41
 
90 million dollars for a MMOG about an FPS with little to no story. No wonder nobody in the gaming industry seems to be able to make money.
Eh, no. Say what you want about the actual gameplay of the Halo-series, but after four games (well, five if you count the RTS I suppose; can't comment on that though) and X amount of novels (if you count those), the lore is actually fairly rich. Sure, it's the usual space-opera theme of "mankind on the brink of destruction" with cliches like "ancient race gone thousands of years ago" blah blah. Then again, show me any fantasy or sci-fi completely devoid of cliches, and I'll give you a million dollars. (it's gonna have to be monopoly money though, as I can't afford it otherwise..)

As far as the Halo universe/lore goes, I have no problems seeing it host a Mass Effect-like game. Of course, Halo being an FPS, the actual narrative isn't anywhere near ME, but I'd put it fully on par with HL2 in terms of story. Which is to say it could make a wonderful B-movie or blockbuster if they threw a large enough budget at it

On the subject of the MMO cancellation, I've gotta say I'm happy. Seems like the usual publisher cluelessness, thinking something like "Oh, Blizzard is printing money with WoW. Let's throw something half-assed together and get a piece of the action!"
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