Soon after we reported on all the latest Halo 3 rumors, new Halo information trickled in. This time it’s about the real-time strategy Halo Wars. During last week’s E3, IGN and Joystiq were fortunate enough to attend a demo presentation of the game hosted by none other than Ensemble Studios, the devs behind the Age of Empires franchise. Not only did they get to experience a tutorial level, but IGN also walked away with the first in-game screens and gameplay footage, along with Joystiq learning some exciting news.

Starting off with the in-game screenshots (viewable below), you’ll notice that they don’t look too great. For example, the terrain lacks detail as seen by the plain rocky mountains and most of the texture work looks very generic. However, all these graphical nuisances are due to the fact that these first shots were taken from a very early build and thereby definitely don’t represent the game in its final form. On the positive side of things, the screens show off some nice lighting effects, even in the current stage of development.

Normally, seeing a game in motion beats viewing still images by far. Not so much in our case. IGN’s short gameplay video embedded below doesn’t demonstrate a graphical fidelity much superior to that of the screenshots. On the other hand, the footage exhibits a great animation system for a RTS, nicely highlighted by the Warthog jumping over a chasm.

Now, on to more interesting stuff. During the Halo Wars demo, Joystiq learnt from the game’s producer Chris Rippy that the studio will be putting out a demo prior to the game’s 2008 release. Thus, those in doubt of the control scheme, which the developer reportedly worked on for full six months, will get a chance to try it out before heading to their local stores. Another interesting fact is that the game will feature an online co-op mode where two players will presumably be able to wage wars against the Covenant.

With Ensemble Studios at the helm and more than a year away from its release, Halo Wars could become the game to pave a new and more refined way for future console RTS games.