Something Awful posted major plot points from Halo 3, just to spoil you. Funny, but not particularly polite. (Careful who’s reading over your shoulder.) Thanks to Narcogen at Rampancy.net for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 17:08:02 UTC)

Z, from Halo3Forum.com, wrote to point out two new montages – Fr0zen’s 4th 1v1 Montage (127 mb) and a trailer for an upcoming Team CyP Montage (28.4 mb), both in WMP9 format. Check ’em out!(Louis Wu 17:05:44 UTC)

Last night, over at the Red vs Blue website, Episode 84, ‘Strong Male Figure’, was posted for sponsors. Tucker learns about being a dad, and the Red Team gets used to their new commander. I don’t like Simmons any more.(Louis Wu 17:02:43 UTC)

Nice! There’s a new Halo 3 T over at the Bungie Store – liquid metal. Thanks, Sniping Ajax.(Louis Wu 16:46:02 UTC)

1Up.com wraps up their three weeks of Halo 3 coverage with an article on the five best things about Halo 3. Read it and drool. Thanks to Drakkari for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 16:33:49 UTC)

William Sullivan-Angulo, of the FL:CE team (a Halo conversion for Freelancer), wrote to point out a bunch of new stuff – an intro video for the game, a teaser video for the Inner Colony Seiges (story stuff), new screenshots, and a new store. They’re also up for some Mod of the Year Awards – you can vote here. Check ’em out!(Louis Wu 16:27:08 UTC)

Legend, from Halo Base, sent us a note about a bizarre glitch experienced by some folks in matchmaking – you need to watch the vid (44 seconds, 2.8 mb, WMP9 format) for yourself. Freaky…(Louis Wu 16:13:58 UTC)

Interesting article at Gamesindustry.biz – a discussion of what qualifies as ‘mainstream’ or ‘mass market’, and how those things got to where they are. Halo is held up as an example of a video game that has reached far beyond its normal target audience, with some speculation as to why. Thanks, deftangel.(Louis Wu 16:11:14 UTC)

As he shows in today’s One One Se7en, Stuntmutt knows which side his bread is buttered on…(Louis Wu 18:15:04 UTC)

Two very cool pieces of artwork showed up in the last couple of days – rather than wait for the next Misc Art update, I thought I’d publicize these now. The first is a gorgeous render (1300×975, 85K) of the Master Chief, helmetless, created by benman08. The second is a pretty amazing piece of collage work (2248×1330, 260K) ; DMDyet pasted together a bunch of pieces of cardboard for a spectacular final product. (His description of the process is here.) Update: my misunderstanding – it seems this was built with paper TEXTURES, not actual paper. Still pretty cool to look at!(Louis Wu 18:08:50 UTC)

A couple of days ago, we posted a Lego recreation of the original Halo 2 trailer, made by Marshall Brekka, of InfalliBull Productions. We recently got mail from Marshall – apparently, a lot of people are uploading this file to YouTube, and not crediting him. The YouTube username of the original creator is infallibull – if you see this file posted under another name, they should be giving credit where credit is due.(Louis Wu 18:08:22 UTC)

More This Spartan Life goodness… Damian Lacedamian was interviewed for the public radio show Studio 360 – the interview airs tomorrow, and is available today for listening on the Studio360 website. A video that went along with the radio interview is available on the TSL website.(Louis Wu 17:39:37 UTC)

Twelve new pieces available for your reading pleasure in the Fan Fiction section – check ’em out!(Louis Wu 17:11:35 UTC)

Earlier this week, we mentioned an imminent release of a Halo CE map; this morning, NeuroKoNeza stopped by our forum to point out that Immure 2 was now available for download. Check out the forum post for links, including a screenshot and a dev-cam flythrough video!(Louis Wu 17:00:03 UTC)

darthbob noticed a new mylar print in the Bungie Store – this one is an image created by Bungie’s Isaac Hannaford, and it’s called ‘Ark Storm‘. Gorgeous piece of work – if you’ve got $40 lying around, grab one of the 500 copies of this print!(Louis Wu 16:53:28 UTC)

I didn’t think this was news, but it’s spawned so many threads on our forum (and others) that if I DON’T front-page it, it’s going to overrun us. In one of the screenshots released recently, there’s some faded text behind the blue Spartan on the left – clearly, whoever photoshopped the text out only did half the job. The text reads ‘Out of Ammo’ on the first line, and ‘Press [X or Y – only half of the letter shows]’ on the second. RVideo makes a solid case for ‘X’ in this post on the Halo3Forum, actually. Folks first noticed the words when the scans from LEVEL magazine started circulating in late October – I didn’t mention it then because of our policy about magazine scans. Now that high-resolution versions of these screens are posted legally, though, more and more people are noticing this, and many of you it’s some sort of an egg, or something. If it really reads ‘X’ in the second line, it might have been removed because Bungie doesn’t want us to know what the X button does in the new UI, yet – but it might have simply been removed to make the screenshot cleaner. Either way, there’s not really enough info to figure out what it WOULD have said after the pressable letter… but now that it’s been front-paged, I hope folks don’t feel the need to start new threads in our forum, pointing it out. (There are dozens already.) And to whoever cleaned up that screenshot for release to the web in the first place… hey, next time could you do a more complete job? Thanks.(Louis Wu 16:49:56 UTC)

First off, apologies for scaring anyone yesterday – I’m fine. On to the news… let’s start with Cromium’s post about an interview with the Frag Dolls, done by This Spartan Life’s Damian Lacedamian, created for Spike TV’s 2006 Video Game Awards. (You’ll need to click on the ‘This Spartan Life’ link on the left to see the vid.) As usual, the interview takes place within Halo – but this one will give you a little bit of insight about the Dolls – where they come from, how they got involved in this stuff. Go listen!(Louis Wu 16:37:16 UTC)

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I had visions of getting up a bit early this morning, before the preparations started (we’ll have over 20 people in the house in less than 3 hours) and putting up whatever Halo news we’ve got in the queue… but that was before spending several hours last night in the emergency room with electrodes taped all over my body (don’t even ASK). So, new plan… we here at HBO wish you and yours a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow! I’m offline for the next 12-24 hours.(Louis Wu 16:37:22 UTC)