Back in July, we mentioned that Alex Seropian was leaving Bungie. Yesterday, this came to pass. Good luck, Alex – and thanks for all the great games.

Life’s been busy – this is Fan Fiction from the last couple of days:

• The Beginning of the End, Part 3, by Wonga
• Rise To Honor, part 22, by Shadow
• Rogue Enemies, part 4, by Spartan415
• Cry for a Hero, part 9, by el_halo_diablo
• Shadows of Archon II, part 7, by Wado
• The New Reach Campaigns Chapter 3, by Gasmask

Give it a read!

Pictures – not of the HNC itself, but of the reception on Thursday night. Check out the setup! (The actual finals were played with 2 players per console on 36″ plasma screens.) We bring you what we can…

A HNC pseudo-update from Matt Soell – no real details… but the Bungie Dream Team is aiming for a win. Check it out at Bungie.net.

Mnemesis, our stalwart (or so we thought) Story Page maintainer, is currently schmoozing with the upper crust, and watching the Halo National Championships… and plans to report back… to Bungie.net! Yep, that’s right, he’s been conscripted as a B.net roving reporter, and plans to post his observations there. Ahh… what the heck, they’re nice guys, too. Keep an eye on Bungie.net for all the details.

A harbinger of things to come? Check out this sneak preview of a Halo 2 site. You didn’t hear it from us.

Our spies are everywhere. Here’s a snapshot of the postgame carnage report from a 16-player CTF game at the reception for the Halo National Championships, held last night at the DoubleTree in Westwood, CA. From our trenchcoat-wearing guy in the field:

It’s the postgame carnage screen shot from a 16 player CTF on Blood Gulch. The game approx 30-40 min. with the players mostly running around playing slayer. Not alot of team play was evident, which figures since none of the 16 guys playing knew or played with each other before the NC. All the players are good, but not as good as those two Canadians from the E3 fan fest.

‘Those two Canadians’ would be Finn and Shovelface, of Team 7hr33.

Stuck on the Library on Legendary? Yes, you could check our our very own Legendary walkthrough, right here at HBO… but it doesn’t come with the nifty-keen pictures you can get along with Bungie’s version. Check it out!

Heh – this story has been floating around for a while, but the comic-book-ripoff angle is new for me, and pretty amusing. The US Army solicited proposals for a nanotech suit for the soldier of the future. (The concept art looks vaguely familiar…) If you want to read some background on the project, see this article at the New Scientist. MIT won the grant ($50 million)… but now have a little bit of trouble explaining how a comic book hero ended up in their design proposal. Thanks to Bowser for the heads-up!

Another quick trailer for you – Halo: Reloaded. 7 megs, 1:21, QT5 format. The audio has a couple of glitches, but nothing serious. If you like it, let Black_Jackal know, on our forum!

There’s a short article in the October issue of PC Gamer about PC Halo – and while much of what’s in it is either common sense or speculation, there is an interesting discussion about aiming.

The Xbox version of Halo has been honored for the way it controls (after some practice), but obviously it can’t achieve the fidelity of the mouse-keyboard format. To help, Xbox Halo has six different subtle targeting aids that allowed the levels to be designed with vertical options such as targeting an enemy high in a tower through a sniper scope. (Other console FPS titles have had to “flatten” the environments to make them gamepad-friendly.) On the PC, looking around with the mouse-keyboard combo is as instinctive as it is intuitive, and so most of these aids will be removed. “When we do this, it also impacts the balance of the game [e.g. head shots], and we have to compensate for these effects in the damage model,” says Chu.

(Chu is Hamilton Chu, Halo’s producer.) Can you tell this was written by a PC gamer? Bias aside, the removal of aiming aids should be welcomed by the hardcore who feel like their control has been taken away from them. We’ll bring you a scan of this article as soon as the issue is off the shelves.

A pair of desktops for you in our Wallpaper section…

Heh – gotta love it when they write the news for you. 🙂

The Psyjnir Complex is giving away three Halo Soundtracks to the people who can predict the winner of the Halo National Tournament Finals.

Go to the Psyjnir 7th Column Chapter to enter.

So? What are you waiting for?

Wondering about the 16 folks who made the finals of the Halo National Tournament? Bungie has put up a story about them at the Tru7h and Reconciliation site. Give it a look! (The finals this weekend will be broadcast later on G4tv – if anyone knows when, please be sure to let us know! It’s not a channel offered here, but maybe we can get the word out to someone who does get it…)

Seems the Xbox has dropped in price AGAIN in Europe – this time to €250/£160. Timing of the announcement was within an hour of Sony’s announcement that the PS2 would drop, as well (to the same price point). A decent time to pick up a console in Europe! (Thanks to Manitou for the heads-up.)

Fan Fiction flood:

• Rise To Honor, part 21, by Shadow
• Cry for a Hero, part 8, by el_halo_diablo
• The Beginning of the End, Part 2, by Wonga
• Shadows of Archon II, part 6, by Wado
• Ascendant Part IX, by Archangel’s Blade
• Unexpected Surprises, by JediKnight114
• The Discovery, part 9, by strategyfreak

If ‘The Beginning of the End’ seems unfamiliar, part 1 (which has since been renamed) was originally posted as ‘Untitled’, by ruppel. Enjoy!

Warbow has put together a table showing which cutscenes in Halo are alterable by the player, and which are not. If you have information that supplements (or contradicts) this, join in the thread!

Whew! Another 31 reviews added to our Reviews database – total is up to 177, and the average rating is 94.6%. There are no print magazine review scores included – just online sources. We received a recent submission which doesn’t really qualify as a ‘review’, since it’s not from a gaming website – but there’s a lot of information, so you can check out Barry the SuperScot’s Halo review. For the reviews from known gaming sites, check our Reviews database. (Time to get a search box in there, methinks…)

Guh. On the heels of yesterday’s announcement of the Forerunner’s network opening, we’ve received mail from Jack Smith that he’s trying to build a ‘coming soon bungie fan network’ – and needs maintainers for the following subsections: Oni, Myth, Marathon, PiD, Minotaur, and Abuse. (He’s got Halo covered, it seems.) This is an all-volunteer effort, of course – no pay – but applicants should contact him at Clearoffjack@aol.com. Is this the newest trend?

wolfboy points out that we haven’t added the Halo National site to our Links page. (We mentioned it in the news on May 20.) Oversight rectified! (Site’s looking good!)