Halo Titan was a Halo MMORPG that was in development at Ensemble Studios, but was unfortunately canceled in 2007. While information regarding the title has been quite limited, we here at Netto's Game Room were given the opportunity to speak with designer and Lore Director Sandy Petersen to learn more about the project.
Before we continue, I'd like to give a special shout-out to user goneisgood for uploading Halo Titan images to Flickr. These are the only known images that exist of the title, and we were not provided additional ones as part of the interview.
Hello, my name is Ben and I'm one of the co-founders of our gaming website Netto's Game Room. First of all, thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to speak with me! Before we begin, could you tell us a little about yourself?
I got my start working in the game industry in 1980. I started out doing tabletop games, then moved to computer games from 1988-2012, then returned to tabletop again.
You have been such an influential part of the world of gaming, and there are so many topics we could discuss. From your role in developing Doom and Quake, and of course Call of Cthulhu; however, today I was hoping we could learn more about the canceled Halo MMORPG Halo Titan. To start things off, could you tell our readers a little about your role during development?
I was one of the designers, who all worked together in creating the game, and my future role was going to be the game’s “lore” director. I would create the worlds, the backgrounds for the quests, the alien cultures, and so forth. I was pretty excited as it seemed right up my alley.
When it comes to the story, Titan was based on the original Halo lore established by the novels and the early video game entries. Back then things were quite a bit different compared to how they are now—including the Forerunners which were originally more humanlike and less alien. Were there any other developments lore wise that were lost due to the game’s cancellation?
The Forerunners were a superior form of human, who were puzzled by the existence of the Earth humans, and preserved us as a sort of museum piece. There was tons of cultural background on the Forerunners and the ancient Covenant. We had playable races which were extinct in Halo’s time, rules for the Flood, and so forth. I mean there is so much. All lost. I don’t think any of it was sent back to Bungie to see if they wanted it. But why would they? Their needs were quite different.
As an MMORPG, the game would’ve contained multiple story arcs, side stories, expansions, etc… but what was the planned main story? What would it have covered?
The main story was the conflict between the Forerunners and the Flood and the Covenant. The ancient Covenant was a conglomeration of alien races who resented the Forerunners leaving them outside the Line (which was a series of forts that kept the Flood out of the main Forerunner space). Everyone hated and feared the Flood of course. Within the Covenant and Forerunner factions there were various competing blocs with clashing ideas how to handle the situation. The Covenant (obviously) hated the construction of the Halos, as did some Forerunners. There were also a thing we called Shield Worlds which were gigantic structures that were sealed off from the Halo effect. Humanity itself was saved thanks to a Shield World which preserved Earth humans, who were then returned to Earth by Ais after the Halos had fired.
What can you tell us about the game’s world? Would we have been visiting familiar locations, be that from the games or novels, or would it have focused on new places instead? Also, was the game going to be limited to a single world, or was space travel involved?
You could visit dozens of worlds. They would all have been new. You could go to the jungle world of the Hunters, or the shared world of the Brutes and Forerunner Cyborgs, or any number of other places. There were also adventures in space, aboard ships and stations.
How would exploring the game’s world have worked? Vehicles play a major role during Halo campaigns, so would they have been usable in Titan as well? And would flight have been possible with Banshees? Or was the game planned to be only a grounded experience?
Yes vehicles existed in a huge variety. We did not plan for players to actually crew starships – these would have NPC operators and just serve to drop you off at places.
And how was the game world structured? Was it fully open zones? Or would “dungeons” have played a major role as well?
There were dungeons (which we called “instances”) as well as open zones. The overall plan for zones was very similar to what WoW was doing at the time. I’m sure it would have evolved.
Titan was set long before the existence of humanity as we know it, so what races and classes were planned to be playable?
Gor the Forerunners, you could play Cyborgs, Sigmas, standard humans, or Hardlights. For the Covenant, you could play as Brutes, Elites, Mimics, or Grunts.
What about the enemies? Would we have seen new races of aliens, or would the Covenant races and the Flood be the main threat here?
There were plenty of aliens. For instance, the Mimics I mentioned before were a new race, which we posited to be extinct in the Halo time period. The Mimics were an intelligent race that lived on the same world as the Hunters (Lekgolo) but were more or less prey animals. They were able to change their body form between several different imprints. At game start, you got your basic Mimic imprint plus a human imprint. Imprinting destroyed the creature you were copying, and was a big deal, so as Mimics increased in experience, they would accumulate more imprints. A Mimic can’t easily be detected while in a false form.
Gameplay wise, was this a complete transition into an MMORPG play style, with your standard keybinds for attack rotations, or did Halo’s roots as a shooter get incorporated as well?
Most of the weapons were ranged, because it was super-science fiction, but we had melee weapons too. We had not gone too far into the actual combat by the time we were cancelled.
What was the planned model for the game? Was it going to be subscription based? And was it planned as a PC exclusive, or was Microsoft hoping to bring it to consoles as well?
We thought it would be PC-only at first, and didn’t know how MicroSoft would monetize it. I guess we sort of assumed it would be like Asheron’s Call.
If the game would've been released, do you think it would’ve continued to use the main Halo titles and stories as a base? Constantly evolving and touching on new lore details as they got introduced? Or would it have paved its own path?
I guess that would be up to me as the loremaster. Fortunately I’d constructed the Forerunner society in such a way that almost anything Bungie did that conflicted with what we established could be explained away. Basically, the Forerunners were organized into Sects. There was a Convocation of Sects where they could vote on matters affecting the whole empire. We had the War Sect, which was the Forerunner military; the Salvation Sect, which tried to rescue those threatened by the Flood. The Ultima Sect, which built the Halos. The Shield Sect, who built the Shield Worlds, and is more or less discredited in the time of Titan. There were even evil enemy Sects that you couldn’t join, like the criminal Dedecus Sect, who worked closely with Jackals and even the Covenant, smuggling Forerunner Tech to hostile aliens. We had dozens of Sects.
So if Halo introduced some new feature, we would explain it away as applying to only certain Sects.
And finally, is there anything about Titan that fans might’ve found surprising?
We had a plan for when the game finally got closed down (which we hoped wouldn’t happen for a decade or so). As the game’s servers turned off, we would show the Halos exploding around the galaxy, destroying all the intelligent life in a spectacular display that we would hope all the Titan players would log on to watch.
Before we go, I'd like to thank Sandy once again for taking the time to speak with me, and for more on Halo Titan, feel free to check out Halopedia. The crew over there has been collecting information regarding the title for years, and they have gathered quite the collection of images and concept art.
And if you enjoyed this article, feel free to check out our interview page for more — including our interviews with the developers of Samurai Pizza Cats: Blast from the Past, the Anima Project, Sandy Gordon of Yacht Club Games, and with Director Shinsuke Umeda.
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