Jillybean has snagged several forum threads and bundled them up for inclusion on the Halo Story Page – you’re welcome to toss in your own two cents about the credibility of any of the theories mentioned!

Today, the Halo Cutscene Library adds the three cutscenes from 343 Guilty Spark – please download the files to your local hard drive (instead of streaming them from our mirrors), and if the download is going very slowly, try a different mirror. (The middle cutscene is quite large.) Enjoy!

Titan85c noticed a Halo mod for Madness Interactive over at Matrix Rayne Online – there aren’t any screenshots, but there’s a downloadable zip (4 mb). If you have Madness Interactive, check this out!

Henri sent us a link from the High Impact Halo forums, containing download links (three resolutions, all WMP9 format) for his jumping vid. Mostly new maps. Take a look!

Recently, the PraetoriaGuard clan has appeared on the movie-making scene, to considerable praise. Now, we’re happy to bring you some of the secrets of its leader, LordGideon, who is working on a guide to help you make movies, hosted right here at HBO. It’s written for Windows XP users – because that’s what LordGideon uses. It will cover a variety of software applications, from video to audio, from freeware to expensiveware. Check out the first two lessons now! (More are coming.)

There’s a Worms-based Halo Flash movie at Newgrounds – that is, a movie showing a Worms-like battle, but with Halo-themed worms. Well done, but a bit slow. Thanks, Eww.

Episode 12 of the Codex Series, ‘Emergency Response’, has been posted – 6:40 worth of great storyline, cinematography, voice work. This one rocks. Go watch. Thanks, trigger119.

Bungie’s Weekly What’s Update was posted last night (as usual) – there’s information about cheating (including a clarification about the difference between Bungie banning folks and Xbox Live banning folks, and a new email address for reporting cheaters), plus some other random stuff – it’s been a bit of a slow week. Go read it!

Red Leader says there’s a new This Island Earth up. Go check.

H2Press.net has released a toolbar for Windows Internet Explorer – it adds handy links to a variety of Halo-related RSS feeds, as well as direct buttons to fansites and bungie.net. Read about (and find download links) on their forum.

rec0, over on the Gearbox forums, has released a tool for adding new bipeds (and other characters) into HaloCE. You can find a download link (and basic instructions) in this thread. Thanks, MasterGrief.

Kaboris pointed out a page on the Xbox.com Japan site (I can’t find a corresponding page yet on the main Xbox.com site) touting the multiplayer map pack. it’s got a bunch of screenshots that haven’t been released (legally) anywhere else yet, and walkthrough vids of the first four maps (a lot like the ones Red vs Blue made, except without voiceover, explaining what you’re looking at, and only available to PCs – the movies won’t play on macs.) Go look! Update: Jimmy points out that those ARE the RvB movies – minus Burnie’s voiceover.

You knew it was only a matter of time before One One Se7en started taking potshots at the new consoles…

nof found a superiffic new Halo remix over at OverClocked ReMix this morning – it was posted a couple of weeks ago, but this is the first we’ve heard of it. It’s a reworking of ‘Insurrection’, and while it sounds a lot like the original, there are also some pretty cool additions. Check it out! (And no, we don’t think there’s any such word as ‘superiffic’ – nor would we ever use such a thing, normally… we were goaded into it by the Gnawfster.)

Half of Halo’s levels are now documented in the Halo Cutscene Library – the two scenes from Assault on the Control Room were added today. (Chester The Destroyer also posted a couple of bloopers he recorded at some point, when he was working on recording cutscenes he never submitted to us – the second one is pretty cool!)

A few days ago, we mentioned a high-quality montage vid released on Halo2Forum.com. It was submitted to our Movie Peer Review Rating System, as well – and has passed. If you already grabbed the ginormous WMP9 version at halo2forum.com, you can pass on this – but if you haven’t, you might want to take a look. The thread referenced in that previous post is full of people complaining that Vrbas isn’t a spectacular-enough Halo player to warrant praise for the montage – but I’d disagree. He’s good – but that’s not really the point. The point is that he made a really well-constructed montage; very, VERY high quality visuals, beautiful timing, interesting footage. Whether he’s good enough to win MLG St. Louis is irrelevant – most of the people playing in that tournament can’t come close to making a montage this enjoyable to watch. We’re offering a 66 mb QuickTime version (bungie.org | mythica.org) – if you can’t stand QuickTime, the links are still up for the 110+ MB WMP9, over at Halo2Forum.com. (If they go down, we can BitTorrent it – but I don’t think we can handle a direct download of that size at this time.) Update: HaloChat has secured some hosting for both versions at FileFront – think big, big pipes. Go grab. Update 2: That Weasel Television has mirrors of both versions, as well – thanks, Feenix!

There’s a new Halo Babies posted today – comes with a spoiler warning for Star Wars III, but it’s pretty funny if you’ve seen the movie.

Wanna give us a hand with our content needs? mnemesis has posted a Help Wanted ad on our forum – he’s looking for level transcriptions. Read the post if you’re interested – as he said, it would be better if we didn’t have duplication of effort, so telling us BEFORE you start is a good thing. And… thanks, in advance!

Whee… Jillybean updated the Halo Story Page with a fan-driven theory, which led another fan to write a blog entry disputing the conclusions, which led to a forum thread about the whole idea. So many words – and the speculation continues!

There’s an interesting article over at Gamasutra – a report of a round-table discussion behind the scenes at E3, involving several industry personalities, including Joe Staten of Bungie. The topics under discussion was character and story development, and how they fit into games today – I’m loving where the conversation eventually got to. Each member brought his own perspective to the table – Joe’s experience with Halo and Halo 2 helped shape his views. Thanks, Deanero.