kabu pointed out a new Fan Fic Pick of the Week, put together by J.D. – check it out!(Louis Wu 11:39:24 UTC)

Jason Broussard sent word that Mindless Distortion, the creators of the Gray Team machinima series, is back with SOLILOQUY. This new mini-series features the voice talent of Kyle Hebert (following that link will show you quite a selection of anime and videogame voice work in the past couple of decades), among others, along with original music from Perimeter of the Void. You can view both the teaser for the mini-series (released a couple of weeks ago) as well as the pilot episode (released yesterday). Intriguing stuff!(Louis Wu 11:31:53 UTC)

Joystiq posted a tidbit about a discounted package available only in Canada – an Xbox 360 Elite, bundled with a network adaptor (normally about $100 CAD) and Halo 3 ($40 CAD) – all for $330 CAD. Swing by The Source (a Circuit CIty affiliate) to grab this.(Louis Wu 11:20:57 UTC)

Hawty McBloggy has highlighted another Halo cross-stitch creation – this one started life as a bad callout, and ended up as a pretty cool wall-hanging. Go check it out!(Louis Wu 11:07:50 UTC)

advent29 noticed that the Amazon.com listing for the ODST Official Soundtrack now has the cover art posted. You like? (Louis Wu 09:34:10 UTC)

Dr. Nick stopped in to say that he’d taken the trouble to plot out the stops that the ODST truck is going to be making over the next month. It’s one thing to see a list of names on a page – it’s another thing entirely to see the route plotted out on a map. Might make it easier to see how close that truck is really coming to you…(Louis Wu 09:33:44 UTC)

2900d4u pointed out a thread from Bungie.net that includes a photo snapped inside the ODST truck, showing off a yellow-helmeted Dare playing Firefight. (Pic was snapped by Bungie’s Max Dyckhoff, so take it up with them if this is considered a leak.) If you like that pic, Max took a whole bunch more. (Louis Wu 09:33:02 UTC)

Devin Olsen showed up for the first day’s festivities with the ODST truck – and was given some special treatment. Read his writeup – there’s some pretty cool info mixed in there with all the gloating!(Louis Wu 09:32:22 UTC)

The guy who made a ton of cardboard weapons for Halo 3 is back – this time with a diorama for giving his McFarlane figures a place to play. Fun stuff! Thanks, Kibbles.(Louis Wu 09:31:53 UTC)

Gamersyde released a 15-minute ODST presentation that they recorded at Gamerscom last week – it’s filmed off the screen, but the HD downloads are quite watchable. It shows off the first cutscene from the game (if you’ve been watching ODST release info obsessively, you’ve already seen this, but it’s nice that it’s all in one place, and viewed at a nice resolution), and looks at a some of the early campaign gameplay. Again, all of the areas covered by this film have been seen in other show presentations, starting with E3 – but the comments from CJ Cowan and Brian Jarrard contain lots of interesting tidbits you might not know (cutscenes are rendered in real time, as you play, so that lip-synching by the characters matches up regardless of language – nice!). Use BitTorrent, if you can, for the downloads – it’s the nicest option for the Gamersyde guys. Thanks to NeoGAF’s Major Williams for the heads-up on this.(Louis Wu 14:32:45 UTC)

Looks like Gamestop made a fun little Halo 3: ODST commercial, highlighting Johnson’s inclusion. Check it out on YouTube! Thanks again, Kibbles.(Louis Wu 14:30:14 UTC)

2good4u2 visited our forum with word of a bunch of new timelapse pics, created from both multiplayer and campaign. Really fun work – check ’em out!(Louis Wu 14:19:45 UTC)

Lots of people were at Redmond’s Gamestop yesterday to play them some sweet, sweet ODST Firefight. One guy filmed the experience (almost all outside the truck) and grabbed a clip of Joe Staten doing the Grunt voice – thanks to Kibbles for the heads-up on these. Also, kanbo stopped in to our forum with his own writeup of the day – sounds like it was a lot of fun! If you’re thinking about catching the truck on one of its other stops in the next month or so, these impressions should give you an idea about what you’re in for.(Louis Wu 14:15:12 UTC)

Yesterday was Friday – and Hawty McBloggy posted another edition of Friday Caption Fun, even though she was on vacaction. We, however, forgot to look for it – so you’re hearing about it on Saturday. (Blame us, not Hawty.) Swing by to see the pick of last week’s captions – and an image that’s just DESPERATE for some funny quips. (Louis Wu 14:52:37 UTC)

The next Halo 3 Game with Fame has been announced – Electronic music group 3OH!3 will be playing with fans this coming Tuesday, August 25, between 8 and 10pm ET. Swing by Xbox.com for full details.(Louis Wu 14:52:03 UTC)

Cody Gordon noticed that for the next few weeks, Staples is offering a promotion (jump over to Offer 4) that might be of interest to Halo fans; for $10, they’ll print your digital picture at 18″x24″, laminated and mounted – it’s an inexpensive (albeit somewhat limited) alternative to the Halo3Screenshots.com printing service, for a short time. Cody sent along a couple of examples to see what you’d get: one | two. Check it out!(Louis Wu 14:51:02 UTC)

LunarShadow let us know that H3O, his Halo 3 Stats Compiler, has been updated; among the improvements is the ability to skip over games in your history that Bungie’s lost the data for. (I had one of these games in early August – and v1.0.6 would simply stop when it got to this game, refusing to collect information about more recent games. v1.0.7 will try – but skip over and move forward.) Grab a copy – and look at your stats in-depth!(Louis Wu 14:50:13 UTC)

The Bungie Weekly Update is live over at Bungie.net (and in our Weekly Update Archive) – it was a busy week, so urk had his hands full summarizing it. The ODST Across America tour, previews of upcoming maps, Gamescom in Cologne, Press in Seattle, all of these are covered. Plus new stuff about the upcoming maps, some really funky pants on David Allen, and a very fun pic found by Stosh – it’s an update worth reading! So go read, already.(Louis Wu 23:57:33 UTC)