How many bites does it take to get to the center of the Ensemble Studios story? One, two, three... err, three! That's the scope of the "Age of Ensemble" retrospective on Crispy Gamer looking back at the history of the RTS developer through the words of the ensemble at Ensemble and industry pundits, even as the studio being folded by owner Microsoft Game Studios. The extensive series of articles concludes with a frank look at what Ensemble was up against by the end of its run, battling burnout after working on the same Age of Empires dynamics for a decade amid industry chatter that the RTS genre was dead, followed by the Halo Wars project, and the simultaneous difficulties inherent in creating an RTS game from a shooter that's targeted towards consoles.