Ok, you have to be kidding me. Supposedly this is nothing more than an outlandishly freak coincidence, but according to the developer blog of Ensemble's Bruce Shelley, the internal codename used for the Halo Wars project is Phoenix-- the same codename used for a scuttled project at Bungie a few years ago that was rumored to be a strategy game of some kind, perhaps a fantasy game in the vein of Myth.

Several sites, including current one-Wu-wonder HBO, pointed out an article on Halo 2 in Entertainment Weekly. Some of those sites also pointed out some things which, while not outright inaccuracies, certainly seem to skew their perception of the game through a film industry lens.

According to a rumor site called GameDreamZ, members of FASA and the Oni team have resurrected the project known as Phoenix, which was abandoned bu Bungie, retitled it Shadowrun, and will release it as a launch title for the Xbox 2, which is supposedly codenamed "Xenon".

In the interests of posterity, we've added news of Phoenix's cancellation to our Phoenix FAQ.

Bungie's own Matt Soell was kind enough to exchange a few words with Rampancy recently about the cancellation of the mysterious Project Phoenix.

Rampancy: How far in the development process did Phoenix get?

Matt: This is a tough question to answer. As with the early stages of Halo's development, we investigated and discarded a lot of ideas, which took a long time. We were still a long way from beta.

Rampancy:Was Phoenix its own engine, or based on Halo?

As Matt Soell put it in the HBO forum and in an email to Rampancy, this is one of those times when rumors aren't entirely untrue.

To wit:

The Phoenix team has decided to shelve the game they were working on in favor of a new project. We actually look upon this as a good thing. They're still called the Phoenix team, but they're doing something different.

And what exactly is something different ?

Stay tuned...

We've begun work on a Phoenix FAQ. Take a look and see if we've missed any questions... or any answers.