Author: halo@bungie.org

Last night, as is true for most Friday nights, Bungie released a Weekly Update – this one contains details on matchmaking playlist changes, more details on upcoming (but not upcoming soon) maps, and a bunch of fan questions, answered. There’s lots of good info in those answers – but the two tidbits that caught my…

Oh, my goodness. The Guest Artist on today’s Another Halo Comic Strip is… well, geez. Go read. And Groan.(Louis Wu 17:03:45 UTC)

DogCow spent a little time detailing the similarities between Halo’s Library level and ‘If I Had a Rocket Launcher’, a Marathon 2 level released in 1995. He found seven of them – and now that I think about it, he’s right! Makes you wonder if Ferrex was thinking about Marathon 2 during the development of…

Mid7night stopped by to announce that he’s released a scenery package for X-Plane – you can now fly around inside a Marathon-Class cruiser in that game, and try and land a Pelican or Longsword in there. Go look!(Louis Wu 15:20:46 UTC)

Heh – Anton P. Nym noticed that Willamette Week, a Portland, OR weekly newspaper, interviewed Jen Taylor, because of a role she’s got at Portland Center Stage right now… and when the conversation turned to Jen’s experience voicing Cortana for the Halo series, she said that she doesn’t get any fan mail related to the…

There’s a fascinating blog post from Mike Caulfield, an administrator at Keene State College in New Hampshire – it posits that games like Halo 3 are better at teaching problem-solving than ‘puzzle’ games. Go read why.(Louis Wu 14:27:39 UTC)

Back in November, we mentioned that Curt Chiarelli, the sculptor that created the molds Joyride used to produce the first Halo action figures, was gearing up to create a limited-edition run of Covenant Grunts – yesterday, we were sent pictures of the final product. I have no idea if any of the 25 models are…

Psychophan7 pointed out a video on CollegeHumor.com that ostensibly relates to the MLG Meadowlands tournament, and the Halo 3 played there. You’d be well advised to pay attention to Psycho’s warning, though.(Louis Wu 13:06:12 UTC)

Bungie has spotlighted the Ascendant Justice blog for its consistently high-quality writing; we’ve mentioned each piece they’ve published as it came out (because we agree with Bungie, the stuff they do is great), but if you missed any of it, this is a great reminder to go back and explore. (The point of this spotlight…

A couple of days ago, JeSteR 343 started up a group at HaloCharts.com, allowing HBO regulars to compare themselves to other HBO regulars. It took a little while for the bugs to be worked out of the grouping system, apparently – but things seem fine now, and there are a number of members already signed…

There are nine new pieces in the Fan Fiction section this week – a great step up from the last couple of weeks! One of the stories has some artwork with it – this will be an option for submitters in the near future, but probably not for at least a couple of weeks. (Please…

Some of you may have noticed the little cake showing up next to yesterday’s date at the top of the page – it marked the 9th anniversary of the inception of this site. It was blam.bungie.org back then, and in fact just a single, blurry picture stolen from Marathon… but it grew into the site…

One of the people behind the Believe campaign that has won so many advertising awards this year speaks up about the creative process that produced it. Thanks, Anton P. Nym.(Louis Wu 20:22:30 UTC)

The latest Double XP Weekend kicked off a couple of hours ago – Living Dead is back on Xbox LIVE. The Legendary and Heroic map packs are required – go read about it at Bungie.net!(Louis Wu 19:56:23 UTC)

Dennis Powers pointed out Shipwrecked 22 – more water!(Louis Wu 19:51:57 UTC)

elessar787 pointed out that Luke is looking for questions to answer in tomorrow’s Weekly What’s Update. Swing by Bungie.net and toss in your two cents!(Louis Wu 19:48:57 UTC)

MLGPro.com is offering five free team passes for the MLG San Diego tournament, taking place June 13-15. Each pass gets a team of four in to the event – for free. (This is a $240 value.) All you have to do to win one is send an email to contest@mlgpro.com with the subject line “FREE…

Hawty McBloggy posted a series of screenshots, created by community members, paying tribute to Frankie and his time at Bungie. Go check ’em out!(Louis Wu 17:45:16 UTC)

We got a note from NZ-TK last night, pointing out a thread at the 405th Forums, and a new helmet he’s been working on. Going through that whole thread, though, showed a SECOND helmet – and with his permission, we’ve put his images online here, for easy viewing. Check out both his EVA helmet (finished…

Sam152, of Halo Wars Addict, interviewed Dispraiser, the lead on the C&C Generals mod Halogen (which was asked to shut down by Microsoft just before Halo Wars was announced, a couple of years ago). Seems like Dispraiser is still a bit angry about the whole situation (and very, very negative about Halo Wars) – go…