Author: narcogen

…next week. It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this site that I’ve lived overseas for eight years, and as such, I can’t walk down to the corner store to pick up Halo 3, it has to be couriered to me. I ordered a Legendary Edition from EBGames.com, and Blackstar has now…

Pro-G has delivered the promised longer interview with Bungie’s Joe Tung and Lee Wilson.

GameGuru interviews Mohit Anand of Xbox India, who makes some pretty ludicrous sounding sales claims for Xbox 360: GG: How is the Xbox 360 currently doing in India? MA: Good question! As per your survey, all of us would be out of our jobs. Your survey says 1500-1600 units. If that were the units that…

Looking to unlock some of those cool armor permutations in Halo 3? Thumb at The Hushed Casket has got you covered with an armor guide.

7th Columnist is livid over a change in Halo 3’s controls. Not one that affect the game; one that affects machinima. Instead of just pressing down on the D-pad to create the weapon-lowering, head-bobbing effect used to create the illusion of talking Spartans in movies like Red vs Blue, in Halo 3 you apparently have…

That’s what BeyondUnreal forum poster Quaz51 asserts that these screenshots he’s taken illustrate. If true, might this be the source of all the cantankerousness over Halo 3’s “not quite next-gen” graphics?

Kotaku says that Halo 3 sold out in at least one store in Japan. Who’d have thunk it?

Chicagoist notes Bungie’s hometown roots at the University of Chicago, Jason Jones’ continued leadership of Bungie, and Alex Seropian’s founding of Wideload.

It’s one thing to always see the glass half full, or to always look for the flaw in an otherwise brilliant diamond. There’s also such a thing as being a spoiler; having no other purpose than to be contrary, “alternative”, or to actively dislike that which others like for the sake of disagreement itself. You…

Want to mess around with Forge maps without having to delete all the default items? Download these modified maps by Chevmeister, with all the default items carefully removed.

According to Microsoft, the Halo franchise’s latest installment has shattered one-day entertainment sales records again; Halo 3 did $170 million USD in its first day of sales in the US.

…or rather woodchuck love, as a new blogger, the animal kingdom newscaster Woodchuck Chumley has shown up at the Huffington Post with his own blog. Perhaps he’ll be answering the age-old question, how much wood would a woodchuck chuck. Or maybe he’ll just talk animal kingdom politics: As we approach election year, I feel it’s…

Bungie has put up a Halo 3 Launch Week FAQ to cover some of the most common new player questions, especially about issues surrounding screenshot uploads and other features that might be having the kinks still worked out.

Ah, aspect ratios and high definition televisions. Just as fans bitched and moaned last month about the fact that both Xbox 360 and PC versions of Bioshock locked displays to a single horizontal FOV setting, whether the user had a 4:3 or a 16:9 screen, now Joystiq is on about how splitscreen works in Halo…

Of course, we’ve heard this before. After Halo 2 was released in 2004, there were rumblings and vague remarks about Bungie wanting to do something else, non-Halo-related, for a change. Which is entirely understandable. Now, Pro-G is quoting Bungie’s Joe Tung as saying Bungie wants to work on something else for a change, and is…

Major Nelson points out an auction to benefit charity that includes some pretty one-of-a-kind items, including an Xbox 360 autographed by Bill Gates, a Zune autographed by J Allard, and a pretty complete collection of Halo games and bonus content.

Cinematic designer Lee Wilson at Bungie responds to some criticism that Halo 3 isn’t as much of a graphical tour de force as games like Bioshock or Gears of War in an article at Pro-G: He said: “It’s completely immersive. The art direction is immaculate. It’s not trying to be incredibly photo realistic or painting…

The Sydney Morning Herald has an article about Bungie AI programmer Damian Isla: Animal emotions such as surprise, interest or disappointment can be useful parts of an AI creature. “They can have an impact in the game,” he says. “Our characters have an incomplete knowledge model – they depend on line of sight. If you…

An article in Wired talks about Bungie’s attention to detail when doing multiplayer and campaign level design: Some of the details in Halo 3 verge on the obsessive. While creating several environments based on the area of Africa surrounding Mount Kilimanjaro, Bungie designers used a satellite map of the region to make sure the geography…

Major Nelson has posted up some pictures of the Master Chief and the Bungie crew in New York at the Halo 3 launch.