When the first trailer for Frank Miller’s upcoming ‘300’ movie was released, there were a couple of different Halo tributes – both tried to stay true to the action in the official trailer. A second trailer has been released – and AgentMonkey117 posted a YouTube link last night to his Halo version – this one uses Halo footage, but rather than matching the visual action of the cinematic trailer, he finds footage that allows him to stay true to the audio – but which is uniquely Halo. I liked it – great choices!(Louis Wu 14:17:34 UTC)

Swinging by the Red vs Blue site last night, I noticed a link to Forbes Magazine, where they were recently written up – and where they created a new vid about making money. Sarge scares me. Then, a bit later, back on their own site, they posted a new PSA for sponsors – it’s called ‘Let’s All Go to the Movies’, and it gives you lots of suggestions on how not to suck so much in movie theaters. The news article about it also contains screenshots of the new RvB theme available on Xbox Live Marketplace (I gotta say, it doesn’t look like any theme I’ve seen so far – and that’s generally a good thing). Whew! That’s a lot of news for a site that sometimes goes weeks between releases!(Louis Wu 13:57:19 UTC)

First off – I noticed a frew folks saw the headline of last night’s Weekly Update post (‘Pistol De-Nerfed’) and wondered if I were being sarcastic, or if there really was going to be something done with the pistol to return it to Halo 1 status – for the record, it was a joke. Sorry. Okay, on to Halo news. The rest of the episodes that This Spartan Life did for Spike TV are now online – we mentioned the Frag Dolls piece back in November, and the Augustana piece earlier this week – if you swing by now, you’ll find three new episodes. Damian talked to Tristan Pope and Terran Gregory, of Blizzard, about World of Warcraft (and Machinima), as well as Geoff Keighley, of Spike TV’s Game Head, and Julian Gerighty, producer of Splinter Cell. Again, there’s no way to get to the videos directly via Spike’s Flash interface, so follow the URL to the VGA 2006 page, and then click on the ‘This Spartan Life’ link in the left navbar to get an interface to all 5 ‘webisodes’. Thanks to Nicholas Brown for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 13:45:13 UTC)

Whoa. The Bungie Weekly Update is up WAY early this week – and it’s WAY short. (The Bungie building lost power, so Frankie wrote it from a nearby coffee house.) There’s some clarification of yesterday’s Brute fiasco (nice to hear that you won’t need a 360 to watch the documentary), and some fun stuff about Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play charity dinner last week. Go read, either at Bungie.net or in our Weekly Update Archive! (Thanks to zugy for noticing this before I headed out this evening.)(Louis Wu 21:13:09 UTC)

Paul Maestri sends word that Halo Heads 34 has been posted – made me smile.(Louis Wu 20:57:28 UTC)

Last couple of updates for a bit – both from Rampancy.net. First up is a speculation piece in Narcogen’s blog – he knows that Frankie has discredited the rumor that Brutes are playable in Halo 3… but he’s written an article explaining why they COULD be, anyway. Second is a note about a new subsite of wideloadgames.org – Voices of the Damned, a site devoted to collecting dialogue from Stubbs the Zombie. Hurrah!(Louis Wu 17:29:28 UTC)

Stuntmutt continues his series of riffs on the Halo 3 ad in today’s One One Se7en. This one’s brilliant. (I know, I know, I just killed One One Se7en… sorry.)(Louis Wu 16:56:44 UTC)

RVideo did a couple of really nice panoramas – you can see one, and grab both (plus some extra files) in this forum post. Check ’em out!(Louis Wu 16:54:28 UTC)

XBWFeenix found a really nice Christmas card from the Ensemble Halo Wars team… check it out!(Louis Wu 16:46:26 UTC)

So today Microsoft announced that Gears of War has sold 2 million copies – according to this article (thanks, JeBr0nie), that makes it “the fastest- selling next-generation game of 2006 and the fastest-selling exclusive Xbox(R) game ever”, and according to this one, it’s beaten Halo 2 in the race to 2 million. (That second article is obviously confused – a search of articles around November 10 and 11, 2004 – here’s a representative one – will show that Microsoft announced sales of 2.4 million copies of Halo 2 in the first 24 hours it was on sale.) The first article… hmm. Halo 2 isn’t a ‘next-generation game of 2006’, so that claim is safe… but until the Vista version of Halo 2 is released, Halo 2 is, indeed, an exclusive Xbox title. Bah – it’s all just bragging rights, anyway. Lots of people have bought Gears of War – that should make Epic and Microsoft pretty happy.(Louis Wu 16:38:20 UTC)

Does Mig rock, or what? (Yes, the thread is locked. All 5 songs are gone. I didn’t want to put this on the front page until they were… but the act needed recognition.)(Louis Wu 15:37:37 UTC)

Bizarre – Sep7imus ran across an interview with Julie Benz (the voice actress who plays Miranda Keyes in Halo 2) – the end of the interview contained questions about Halo 2, and some perplexing information:

TVGuide.com: Are you all done with your voice work for the Halo 3 video game?

Benz: You know what? I am actually not a part of Halo 3. I was informed a couple of weeks ago that they are actually changing the voice of Captain Miranda Keyes, and giving her an accent.


TVGuide.com: Are you serious?! What kind of an accent?

Benz: I have no idea. [Laughs] They didn’t even entertain the idea of having me do it, so… I was very sad. I was very sad. I had such a great time doing Halo 2.

An accent? I wonder why? There are more Halo-related questions in the interview – go read!(Louis Wu 13:46:22 UTC)

Gah. I forgot to post this a couple of days ago – but Luke McKay sketched up the newest character in the RvB series, Lil’ Sis. Kind of Pippi Longstocking-ish, you ask me…(Louis Wu 13:41:21 UTC)

rayzer730 was browsing DeviantART, and ran across this image by luxun. Great work! Seems like he does a lot of coloring, as well – check out this pic. (Louis Wu 13:17:20 UTC)

Twelve new pieces for you this week in the Fan Fiction section – new authors, old favorites – go look!(Louis Wu 13:11:35 UTC)

MLG’s released another podcast, this one discussing the National Championships and what helped (or hindered) the top teams in their quest for top honors. 10 minutes, 4.6 mb – go listen. Thanks, 3Suns.(Louis Wu 12:38:15 UTC)

Happy Birthday today (and a sad farewell) to vshields ash, who has turned 55 – and has announced his retirement from the Halo community. (It’s real, and it’s time, and though we’re going to miss him, mostly because I won’t be able to say there’s a community member who’s almost 15 years older than I am (well, except Marty, but he’s so old he’s passed go and started over – I think he’s younger than KP now), it’s the right thing to do.) Do a search for him here, or more usefully, at High Impact Halo, if you want to relive some of his contributions. vern… it’s been a good run. Take care of yourself.(Louis Wu 12:30:11 UTC)