Great video interview with Marty O’Donnell over at IGN – Marty talks about sound design, and emotion tweaking. Good stuff! Thanks, darthbob.(Louis Wu 22:55:32 UTC)
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Humpday: Bungie Offspring
Bungie’s been frantically searching for opponents we can beat in order to raise our morale. This week, we finally found our match: Bungie’s children! That’s right, Bungie beats its own children.
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Halo 2 Vista Screens from X06
Bungie was pretty busy yesterday in Barcelona, not only with the two big announcements but also in showing off Halo 2 Vista. Today we’ve added the screenshots they released to the Halo 2 Vista section of the site, so go check them out!
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Storytelling Roundtable
The roundtable discussion about storytelling in games this morning at X06 between Peter Jackson, Greg Zeschuk (Bioware) and Peter Molyneux (Lionhead) – moderated by Frankie – has been put online, in its entirety, by TeamXbox, in WMP9 format (almost 200mb). I haven’t had time to watch more than a couple of minutes – but grab a copy, it sounds like a fascinating discussion! Thanks, Tempus Fugit.(Louis Wu 21:38:41 UTC)
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Out of the gate at a flat run
Hmm… this is pretty bizarre… Team Xbox has Halo Wars on the list of games arriving in time for the holidays this year; I have a little trouble believing that, since that means they pretty much need to have sent it to the duplicators by now… but hey, stranger things have happened. I say, until Ensemble confirms, count this as a typo. Update: Thanks to Black Six, who noticed an all-but-invisible line (see screenshot) which separates some of the games on this list from the actual Holiday releases – Halo Wars is NOT coming out this year.(Louis Wu 21:27:01 UTC)
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Unused Halo 2 Animation Clip
I’m not sure how good an idea this is, but… BARBARIC RAGE stumbled across the portfolio of the Treanor Brothers, a 3D Animation and Cinematics company – apparently, they created a a 10 second web trailer for the launch of the Halo 2 website back in 2004. As far as I know, it was never used – but it’s pretty cool! Take a look. Update: Tempus Fugit says I’m wrong – he remembers seeing it.(Louis Wu 20:17:17 UTC)
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Comical Mesh
Paul Maestri writes to say that Halo Heads 13, with a visit from One One Se7en, is now posted; this makes much more sense (and is actually quite funny) if you listened to Podtacular 82.(Louis Wu 20:13:35 UTC)
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Jackson discussion available as audio
Gah. I grabbed this this morning, but forgot to post it. Microsoft has made the streaming feed from yesterday’s press conference available again, for those that missed it live – but the video is so small, and (in the case of the discussion with Peter Jackson) so irrelevant, I simply cut out the audio portion of the Peter Moore/Peter Jackson section – you can grab it in MP3 format (under 2 mb for 6 minutes) here. Listen for yourself to how he describes the upcoming products from Wingnut Interactive.(Louis Wu 18:28:32 UTC)
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Wikipedia never sleeps
Heh – rapture is amused by how quickly Wikipedia info is compiled – check it out, there’s already a pretty comprehensive page on Halo Wars. (rapture also wanted to point out that the new H2 for Windows screens are browsable at halo2pc.org – though if you happen to be browsing in Safari, the page is invisible.)(Louis Wu 15:08:16 UTC)
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The Life Obstacles of Special Ted, Episode 4
Haloplayer, of Injured Knee Productions, sent the MPRRS ‘The Life Obstacles of Special Ted, Episode 4’, a video depicting the troubles Ted has in the fast food and automotive sales industries. Poor Ted. Funny stuff – grab a copy in WMP9 format (34.4 mb) or QuickTime format (34.2 mb).(Louis Wu 14:16:59 UTC)
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X06 Humpday Challenge (sort of)
Sneaking in under the radar, SketchFactor posted a Humpday Challenge writeup yesterday, missed (by our readers, anyway) until this morning, when hnc wondered about it. It’s not Halo, this time around – they played Shadowrun and Gears of War – but the end result (Bungie gets battered) was pretty much the same. Well, that’s not TOTALLY true. Sketch and Frankie played against bots in Shadowrun… and got demolished. Then Frankie played Sketch in Gears of War – and Frankie won. (Hmm…) Anyway, fun read, take a look!(Louis Wu 13:47:37 UTC)
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He’s hit bottom, and just started digging
Foo Mo Jive points out new content at Podtacular.com. Episode 82 has been posted, with guest host Stuntmutt, who is so self-effacing that the Podtacular boys have started a ‘save Stuntmutt’ fund. (It also covers stuff like the Bungie Podcast, Halo news, a glitch roundup, and more. This was all recorded on Sunday, which means the X06 revelations from yesterday aren’t mentioned.) And Halo News 6 is up, the latest episode of a new parody machinima news show, in both YouTube (Flash) and iPod (mp4) versions. Get to downloading!(Louis Wu 13:39:52 UTC)
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Down the Road
One of the biggest discussion topics flooding our forum at the moment (and flooding is the right word; we’ve jumped from an average of about 200 posts/day to about 800 in the last 24 hours) is the idea that Halo content is now being created outside of Bungie’s direct control. This may or may not turn out to be a bad thing, in terms of the quality of Halo game content down the road… but many of the issues have been laid out by Hawaiian Pig, on our forum, and Narcogen, at Rampancy.net. Both are good reads; check ’em out.(Louis Wu 13:32:22 UTC)
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X06 Humpday With A Twist
Frankie and SketchFactor, over in Barcelona for the X06 event, decided to do a different sort of Humpday Challenge this week, applying their Halo 2 skills to other games available for play.
The two pitted themselves against bots in Shadowrun (the bots won) and then against each other in Gears of War (Frankie won).
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X06 Humpday With A Twist
Frankie and SketchFactor, over in Barcelona for the X06 event, decided to do a different sort of Humpday Challenge this week, applying their Halo 2 skills to other games available for play.
The two pitted themselves against bots in Shadowrun (the bots won) and then against each other in Gears of War (Frankie won).
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In With The New… And Push The Old Stuff Over A Bit
To cope with all the new things we’re tracking now, we’ve made some additions to the site. There is now a Halo Wars image gallery and a mirror of the QuickTime version of the Halo Wars trailer; this is a mirror of the same file provided at HBO and re-encoded by Louis Wu.
The image gallery has the five official images from the HaloWars.com website, as well as a series of 17 screen captures from the QuickTime trailer.
There are also keyword tags for Ensemble Studios, for Halo Wars, for Wingnut Interactive and for their upcoming series of Halo games, which for the moment we are codenaming BLAM because no title has been announced.
The Features menu in the left sidebar has a new widget for Ensemble, and this is where the Halo Wars content will live. If you’ve got javascript enabled, each of the hierarchical menus with a triangle sign can be open or closed without reloading the page by clicking the triangle.
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In With The New… And Push The Old Stuff Over A Bit
To cope with all the new things we’re tracking now, we’ve made some additions to the site. There is now a Halo Wars image gallery and a mirror of the QuickTime version of the Halo Wars trailer; this is a mirror of the same file provided at HBO and re-encoded by Louis Wu.
The image gallery has the five official images from the HaloWars.com website, as well as a series of 17 screen captures from the QuickTime trailer.
There are also keyword tags for Ensemble Studios, for Halo Wars, for Wingnut Interactive and for their upcoming series of Halo games, which for the moment we are codenaming BLAM because no title has been announced.
The Features menu in the left sidebar has a new widget for Ensemble, and this is where the Halo Wars content will live. If you’ve got javascript enabled, each of the hierarchical menus with a triangle sign can be open or closed without reloading the page by clicking the triangle.
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X06 Humpday Challenge
Frankie and I are over in Barcelona for Microsoft’s X06 event but we still managed to throw together a little Humpday Day challenge… with a twist. Some things may change, but some things will always remain the same.
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Deadly Encounters Of The Spirit Of Fire
From Ensemble Studios’ own web page is this announcement for Halo Wars, which may assuage some of those already screaming that the meagre amount shown in the trailer contradicts known canon:
Breaking News – Ensemble Studios is bringing real-time-strategy to the Xbox 360 and to the Halo universe. Designed exclusively for the Xbox 360, Halo Wars allows you to take charge of the human UNSC armies and see the Halo universe from a totally new perspective.
Halo Wars is set during the UNSC’s first deadly encounters with the Covenant, allowing players to lead the crew of the UNSC’s “Spirit of Fire” from initial skirmishes to an all out war against the evil Covenant.
It’s been pointed out that the very first Covenant-Human encounter was at Harvest, when no Spartans were present. However, I certainly think there are enough gaps in the record of the Human-Covenant war as presented in the novels to place a ground battle on a human colony world with Forerunner artifacts the Covenant want access to, where Spartans are in play and the Covenant are not yet glassing all Human worlds as a matter of policy, or are perhaps avoiding glassing one in particular for specific reasons.
Everybody calm down.
