It looks like you’ll have to wait a bit longer if you were clamoring for a Halo MMO, because Gamasutra broke a story today stating that Ensemble Studios’ canceled project was a Halo MMO. Yes, you heard that right. They even have screenshots of the early game engine, user interface, et al.

The unfortunate reality though is that Ensemble Studios is closing its doors after creating Halo Wars – meaning the developer of the hit Age of Empires will not be finishing this until-now-top-secret project. Rumors dated back as early as 2006 that Bungie and Ensemble were teaming up for a Halo-themed MMO, but it looks as though – even if there was a chance it would happen – it now won’t.

What’s really striking about the early concepts is how much the game looks like World of Warcraft. I know, I know – it’s a sci-fi game, right? The engine, texture style, and even the unit frames look like something you’d find in World of Warcraft. Almost as if someone ripped open the WoW model format, played around with it, and created a sci-fi mod of the game. The first thing that immediately pops into my mind when looking at this screenshot is: “Hey, that guy has Pitbull and Fubar installed!”

Included in the article is a chat with Massively editor Michael Zenke where is picks apart the concepts and discusses similarities with other MMOs to reinforce that this was indeed a Halo MMO project. If it wasn’t, it was sure gonna be one hell of a small-scale game.

There’s also a full flickr gallery up now with lots and lots of screenshots of the canceled prototype. There are 50 shots in total in the gallery ranging from renders to what appear to be in-game screenshots of early demo and alpha builds.

What do you think? Will we ever see this Halo MMO resurface in the future? And if we do, will Halo actually work as an MMO? To read more, head over to the Gamasutra article.