Author: Rampancy – Se7en Years Of Halo

The HaloWars.com forums are both new and very busy. It has been difficult at time to get at the interesting discussions because so much time has been taken up by the same issues over and over again. Since the announcement of Halo Wars, some eleven thousand posts have been made. About half of them are…

The buzz has died down a bit, but there are still a few sites catching up with the X06 Halo Wars bombshell. The latest is the BBC’s site, which quoted Bungie’s Brian “SketchFactor” Jarrard as well as HBO’s own fansite editor, Claude “Louis Wu” Errera. As for why a Halo RTS by Ensemble, Sketch put…

Indie in the Halo Wars forum pointed out some listings from the jobs page at Ensemble Studios. What he found particularly interesting were two items for MMO environmental and concept artists; what I find interesting are the console programmer and Xbox Live developer positions. Ensemble hasn’t really said a word yet about the features of…

1Up is reporting that EGM’s issue #210, presumably the December 2006 issue if it will hit newsstands on November 14th as they claim, will feature Halo 3 in a big way. The current issue has a teaser for that feature.

The Money Times: Halo Universe To Expand Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Peter Jackson to work on future ‘Halo’ installment Edmonton Sun: Jackson speaks, gamers listen Gaming Insider: Interactive’s Attractions Grow For Moviemakers And Marketers GameDaily: The Future of Halo Not a lot of new information there, although the Money Times article does reiterate that Jackson’s Halo games…

Less ado, more do: Eurogamer: Halo Wars Is For Ze Germans Dolbex: How Far Can Bungie Stretch? Bungie: Bungie.net Update Xboxyde: HaloWars Q&A and Interview with Peter Jackson Primotech: Marty O’Donnell’s Wife Plays Bejeweled

Wideload Games, makers of Stubbs the Zombie and currently working on an unspecified number of unspecified projects for unspecified platforms in their sweet Chicago digs, is looking for a Lead Engineer: Sure, there are other options. You could move to California and get a job squeezing out WWII shooters for some big company. Bet nobody’s…

Supernostro pointed out an article at IGN suggesting that in Q1 of 2007, the CPU in the Xbox 360 will get an upgrade that will make the console more reliable: Chartered Semiconductor will update the 360 CPU to a 65nm process, the current state-of-the-art in chip manufacturing techniques. The new Xbox 360 CPUs will benefit…

More links about the ever-expanding Halo universe: WarCry: Peter Jackson Into Games, Working on New “Halo” TeamXbox: Video of Storytelling panel at X06 featuring Jackson, Frankie, and Peter Molyneux IGN: Video interview with Bungie’s Marty O’Donnell Hollywood Reporter: Peter Jackson buddies with Microsoft for video game studio HBO: The audio portion of Microsoft’s X06 presentation…

Frankie and SketchFactor, over in Barcelona for the X06 event, decided to do a different sort of Humpday Challenge this week, applying their Halo 2 skills to other games available for play. The two pitted themselves against bots in Shadowrun (the bots won) and then against each other in Gears of War (Frankie won).

To cope with all the new things we’re tracking now, we’ve made some additions to the site. There is now a Halo Wars image gallery and a mirror of the QuickTime version of the Halo Wars trailer; this is a mirror of the same file provided at HBO and re-encoded by Louis Wu. The image…

From Ensemble Studios’ own web page is this announcement for Halo Wars, which may assuage some of those already screaming that the meagre amount shown in the trailer contradicts known canon: Breaking News – Ensemble Studios is bringing real-time-strategy to the Xbox 360 and to the Halo universe. Designed exclusively for the Xbox 360, Halo…

While I don’t think there’s enough actual content in the Halo Wars trailer to do a full-on annotation, as for the Halo 3 trailer, I did think it worthwhile to try and collect some thoughts about yesterday’s announcements that will be worth pondering in the time between now and when we actually see these new…

There’s an embarassment of riches in Halo-related news out of X06: Kotaku: Jackson Working On New Halo Game Kotaku: Halo RTS Announced Joystiq: X06 Live Blog Major Nelson: X06 Live Blog Gamasutra: New Halo Releases, Partnerships GameSpot: Wingnut Unscrewing New Halo Franchise GamesAreFun: Bungie and Ensemble team up for Halo Wars (360) RTS Xbox.com: Microsoft…

Xbox.com has put up an item on the Halo Wars announcement; there’s one particularly interesting tidbit there that places the game at the beginning of the human-Covenant conflict: “Halo Wars” places the player in command of human UNSC armies as they deploy for mankind’s first deadly encounter with the enemy Covenant forces. Given that the…

Since real Bungie fans don’t trust a word that is said about the Halo franchise, or indeed any Bungie game, unless it comes straight from Bungie, KP has now posted at Bungie.net to give the official imprimatur to the heretofore scurrilous rumors spread in Spain by Peter Moore and Peter Jackson. To wit: Ensemble Studios…

Major Nelson did a backstage interview with Peter Moore before the press event. Despite the latter’s predilection for annoying golf claps punctuating his presentation, he does redeem himself with his good taste in beer, mentioning that Bass ale is one of his green room requirements. A link to the video interview can be found here:…

The press event saved the best for last, in an almost Steve Jobsian “just one more thing” sort of way, with a trailer for Ensemble Studios’ upcoming Xbox 360 title, Halo Wars. It features a battle between Human and Covenant forces, as well as Spartans other than the Master Chief. The latter, of course, has…

Peter Jackson has just been on stage with Peter Moore to announce the formation of Wingnut Interactive. I really believe that there is a new form of entertainment that is not a film and is not a game. I am not a game designer. But what I am really interested in is in the idea…

Halo still hasn’t gotten more than a token mention in the press event so far, except for Moore’s statement that fans should expect something new related to Halo 3 “before the end of the year”.