Last night, at their PAX Q&A panel, Rooster Teeth unveiled an amazing animated short showing off the Red vs Blue characters in a completely different context. They’re not ready to DO anything with this material yet (they’re in the feeling-out stages with various parties), so they’re not planning on putting it online any time soon… but (as could be expected) the session was shakeycammed, and can be watched online (thanks, 2900d4u). These vids are totally unworthy representations of this footage… but they’re all you’re gonna get for the near future.(Louis Wu 15:37:53 UTC)

MasterChief2829 found another couple of gameplay vids showing off Assembly gameplay – and Kotaku has one, too. I’m sure there’ll be more throughout the weekend.(Louis Wu 15:37:27 UTC)

The Seattle Times has a profile piece on Alexis “Mischief” Hebert, one of the Frag Dolls, in the context of her preparations for tomorrow’s 128-team Halo 3 tournament at PAX. Nice look into the online life of a frontline female gamer!(Louis Wu 15:36:59 UTC)

The folks at CrunchGear have put up a video walkthrough (er, runthrough? wanderthrough, with dying?) of one of their guys playing the new map while at PAX. Go look! Thanks go to DMFanella for the heads-up on the forum.(mnemesis 03:34:07 UTC)

The Bungie WWU is available over on B.Net. An introduction to a tale about Bungie’s Ultimate Frisbee team, a copy-and-paste of the PAX booth info we reported on earlier, and a bunch of pictures of Assembly. What’s Assembly, you say? Just a new map (remember the code name Purple Reign?) that folks who attend PAX get to play on this weekend. Curse them all!! Go check it out, the pictures are beautiful. Dilly noted it first on our forum. Update: Whoops, forgot to add this: Dilly also posted the images from the B.Net article, in case folks can’t get there to see them. Pretty… (mnemesis 03:25:40 UTC)

And… that’s it for me today. PAX starts in a few hours, and it’s time to get moving! Enjoy your Friday, there are still some HBO folks on duty if you have news, I think. (We’ll certainly have a wrap-up article or two, but I’m not bringing a laptop to the show.) If you’re IN Seattle, check out the schedule for the Bungie Booth. Tons of activities!(Louis Wu 17:17:09 UTC)

Tony ‘ubald’ Marcotte sent word of another new render he’s done – this one is a gorgeous shot of a ghost, riding off into a sunset. Go check it out in the gallery we’ve set up for him here!(Louis Wu 16:23:56 UTC)

Here’s one of the more unique uses of the Halo 3 lobby I’ve ever seen. TruthPastor SBG holds a pair of bible study classes on Monday nights, for his clan members (and anyone else interested) – obviously, only fifteen other people can participate in a single lobby at once, but in fact he’s run a pair of Xboxes, with a pair of mics, to bring together 31 people total (15 slots per box, plus his own presence). If you’re interested, they have a web page with information. Halo 3-enabled bible study… who’da thunk it?(Louis Wu 16:01:01 UTC)

Weta’s taking preorders on their Cortana Statue – $225 US, with the statue actually shipping 2nd quarter 2009. As an incentive for tying up your money for the next 6-9 months, they’re entering all preorders before September 30 into a drawing – win the drawing, and you might be flown down to Weta Studios and given a ride in the Warthog they built. (You can enter the sweepstakes WITHOUT preordering – full details are on the Sweepstakes page – but they’ll do it for you if you commit to buying something.)(Louis Wu 15:16:55 UTC)

Eight new pieces are up for your reading pleasure in the Fan Fiction section today – go get ’em!(Louis Wu 15:14:58 UTC)

mattroe told us about a Halo 3 reference on the Australian comedy program Rove. I KNEW there were extras Bungie didn’t tell us about!(Louis Wu 11:11:13 UTC)

Kido Badtower stopped by to announce his machinima series ‘Willingly Insane’ – he’s already created 9 episodes of Season 1, and 4 episodes of Season 2, but he’s remaking the Season 1 vids. All eps are hosted at YouTube. Go see what you think!(Louis Wu 11:08:52 UTC)

Okay, so back in February, we posted a news bit about one of our readers who speculated that an announcement by Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford was Halo-related; his original post is no longer available on his website, but Archive.org has a copy. This info was updated, sort of, in May – but nothing really materialized. Well, the latest Official Xbox Magazine has a rumor in it that ties Gearbox and Halo together again; Planet Halo was the first site I saw to notice this, but by last week, it had been picked up by almost every major gaming site. Today, Kotaku has published an internal Gearbox email in which Corrinne Yu, a programmer who’s worked for them for some time, announces that she’s taken the Lead Engine Architect job on the Halo team at Microsoft. (Thanks, Ross.) Now, this might actually be totally unrelated; it’s been clear for a while that Microsoft is building up their internal Halo team, and the fact that they recruited Yu from Gearbox might have nothing whatsoever to do with Gearbox – it might just be that she was the best prospect for the job. Lots of people are connecting the dots, though, so the rumor’s out there – and now we have a reason why. (Well, kind of. If you were planning on building the next Halo game, would you let one of your best programmers go to someone ELSE’S Halo team?) IS Gearbox working on a new version of Halo for the next-generation Xbox? That remains to be seen. One of their hottest programmers is leaving to run the Microsoft Halo team, though. That much, we know.(Louis Wu 10:52:51 UTC)

Topless Robot (relatively safe for work, despite the name) has put up a ‘Top 10 Sexiest Action Figures Ever Made‘ – and a certain naked-and-glowing female AI from the Halo series made it to #3 on the list. Thanks, xupaosso.(Louis Wu 17:06:36 UTC)

Bryan Simon wrote an ode to Bungie and Halo 3 – you can find it on YouTube. Fan love rocks! Go watch!(Louis Wu 16:58:45 UTC)