Paul Maestri writes to let us know that Halo Heads 4 is now up – Cliffy Bear? Goodness.(Louis Wu 18:32:29 UTC)
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Host With The Most.
Sometimes, you can look at the most recent One One Se7en and know exactly what Stuntmutt was doing when he came up with the concept. Today is one of those times.(Louis Wu 16:35:54 UTC)
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Oh, bloody brilliant, mate.
Hellhawk reminded me that there are still hundreds of dialogue snippets in the queue (I’d completely forgotten about them) – I’ve posted nearly 100 marine clips today, and will do my best to get through most of the rest soon. Some of these are fantastic – go browsing! Update: Hellhawk just sent in an extra snippet which just needed to be released… sort of not safe for work.(Louis Wu 14:29:51 UTC)
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Friday’s Fanfic
Only 10 new pieces in the Fan Fiction section today – probably because of the Fanfic contest going on at UNSCDF. Enjoy these!(Louis Wu 13:03:15 UTC)
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Where do I apply for the ‘Contract Jerk’ position?
This week’s Halo Humpday Challenge was against NeoGAF (as far as I can tell, GAF = “Gaming Age Forums”) – GhaleonEB mentioned it (and the Bungie loss) yesterday afternoon, but the Bungie writeup wasn’t posted until evening. Bungie brought in a ringer (I’m pretty sure there’s no ‘Hawt Chik’ position on Microsoft’s payroll), but even with the help, they were pasted. They lost the warmup, they lost the three games of the actual challenge, they lost the 4th extra game. To be fair, the first and last games were 6-on-5… but all three ‘official’ matches had even teams – at least number-wise. Sounds like it was a fun series, nonetheless!(Louis Wu 11:33:14 UTC)
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Dead Man’s Hand – The Weekly Goodness
Dead Man’s Hand remains a hotbed of Halo discussion and speculation; new articles this week include a writeup of Dead Man’s Potluck (a night of gaming I’m really sorry I missed), a discussion on when playing Halo on XBL stops being fun and starts to be stressful, 22 Questions with Wheezin Geezers’ Overlord Sunburned Goose and artist extraordinaire Pinkuh, an ode to the beauty that is Halo, and a short look at what can happen when you run out of equipment. All in all, a collection of articles that should keep you entertained for longer than it took me to write this! Dweezle stopped by our forum to point this stuff out, but thanks also to Pinkuh.(Louis Wu 11:19:43 UTC)
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What’s Next for Bungie?
What the heck? Dean Takahashi, who writes books about gaming as well as a column for the Mercury News, has put up a blog entry that discusses what might, or might not, be going on inside Bungie Studios. (He suggests that on top of Halo 3, there’s a team working on another game, PLUS a smaller project involving a crew of top talent.) Okay, that stuff’s interesting, and may or may not prove to be true over time. Give it a read. What generated my ‘what the heck?’ response, though, was in the last paragraph:Amazon.com lists two new novels coming by Eric Nylund. One is Halo: the Ghosts of Onyx, slated for release on Oct. 31. Another is Halo: The Ghosts of Coral, slated for release on April 3, 2007.
He’s right – Ghosts of Coral is listed at Amazon, with a release date of April 3, 2007. However, a search of the listed ISBN number comes up blank. Is Amazon off its rocker? Or has Tor simply not filed the proper paperwork for the next book yet? (We know there are at least two more slated after Ghosts of Onyx – and if Amazon knew nothing except a possible release date, I suppose it makes sense that they’d use the placeholder title they had for the LAST one… but there are two pieces of info in this listing which are interesting: that date, and the fact that Nylund’s writing it. Is Amazon right?) Update: Looks like someone was busy this morning – that ISBNdb link now works! Thanks to UrsusArctos for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 09:50:54 UTC)
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Second Game In The Works At Bungie
San Jose Mercury News columnist Dean Takahashi, also author of books on the Xbox and Xbox 360, has a new column up saying that a small team of developers within Bungie Studios, led by Jason Jones and Chris Butcher, aren’t working on Halo 3. They’re working on something else:
They are on a small project that is exploring something new beyond the Halo universe. These guys are the cream of the crop in terms of the key talent at Bungie. Without them, neither Halo nor Halo 2 would have happened. Jones took about a year off after the launch of Halo 2, traveling around the world. Now he’s back and is trying to come up with something new.
The next step is clear: we must find out the code name for this project, or invent one ourselves. Any suggestions?
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Second Game In The Works At Bungie
San Jose Mercury News columnist Dean Takahashi, also author of books on the Xbox and Xbox 360, has a new column up saying that a small team of developers within Bungie Studios, led by Jason Jones and Chris Butcher, aren’t working on Halo 3. They’re working on something else:
They are on a small project that is exploring something new beyond the Halo universe. These guys are the cream of the crop in terms of the key talent at Bungie. Without them, neither Halo nor Halo 2 would have happened. Jones took about a year off after the launch of Halo 2, traveling around the world. Now he’s back and is trying to come up with something new.
The next step is clear: we must find out the code name for this project, or invent one ourselves. Any suggestions?
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Conference Comments Cause Cutscene Controversy
Gamasutra reports that Alexis Nolent, Editorial Story Design Director for Ubisoft, delivered remarks at the Austin Games Conference on the integration of stories into games. He seems to favor the Half-Life 2 brand of “scripted events” versus the more traditional, cinematic sort of Halo-style “cutscenes”:
First, he saw a trend toward fewer cinematics, and more scripted events. Nolent says Ubisoft is trying to get rid of cinematics entirely, but they do sometimes sneak back in when a map has to be scrapped or there’s some other unexpected problem. Nolent expects to see more “playable cut scenes” or scripted events where the story moves ahead, but players still have opportunities for interaction.
Over at Kotaku, commenters have weighed in on both sides; some don’t want the game to wrest control of the camera away from them and force them to watch a cutscene, reminding them that they’re consuming a pre-set story in a medium that is supposed to be interactive, and others dislike having “down-time” in an area when they can’t leave and a set of predetermined NPC actions takes place, except without dramatic camera angles or stirring musical score.
What do you think? Are games better off with cutscenes, or scripted events? Vote in our poll!
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Conference Comments Cause Cutscene Controversy
Gamasutra reports that Alexis Nolent, Editorial Story Design Director for Ubisoft, delivered remarks at the Austin Games Conference on the integration of stories into games. Nolent seems to favor the Half-Life 2 brand of “scripted events” versus the more traditional, cinematic sort of Halo-style “cutscenes”:
First, he saw a trend toward fewer cinematics, and more scripted events. Nolent says Ubisoft is trying to get rid of cinematics entirely, but they do sometimes sneak back in when a map has to be scrapped or there’s some other unexpected problem. Nolent expects to see more “playable cut scenes” or scripted events where the story moves ahead, but players still have opportunities for interaction.
Over at Kotaku, commenters have weighed in on both sides; some don’t want the game to wrest control of the camera away from them and force them to watch a cutscene, reminding them that they’re consuming a pre-set story in a medium that is supposed to be interactive, and others dislike having “down-time” in an area when they can’t leave and a set of predetermined NPC actions takes place, except without dramatic camera angles or stirring musical score.
What do you think? Are games better off with cutscenes, or scripted events? Vote in our poll!
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Humpday: NeoGAF
Bungie accepted a challenge from some Halo 2 fans over at the NeoGAF forums this week. Over the course of three very close games, both teams performed admirably but one came to rise above the other. Possibly as a result of chetz and sploitz.
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Halo Heads 3 – Wishlist
Paul Maestri points out that Halo Heads Episode 3 (his webcomic) is now online. Heh – I’ve felt the same way as his protagonist…(Louis Wu 22:15:05 UTC)
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Mute Radio Episode 3
Mute Radio (nee MLG PwnCast) has launched a totally new site design, and have released Episode 3, covering the new site, MLG Orlando, and more. Go grab a copy!(Louis Wu 13:38:51 UTC)
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What Bungie Artists do outside of Bungie
Vironex was doing some poking around at Bungie.net, and found a link to the personal website of Tom Doyle, a Bungie 3D artist. Most of what’s visible there is work he did for other games he worked on before Bungie hired him… but a few images look Halo-ish. The floor symbols and door shapes in his Hallway Environment are clearly Halo-related… and his Control Room Environment is pretty slick, as well. Ft. Hannaford Base could be from a number of futuristic FPSs – but the name matches nicely with another Halo artist. Look around the ‘Meet the Team‘ pages… you might find OTHER interesting stuff!(Louis Wu 12:29:17 UTC)
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Tools and Icons
KP sat down with two new permanent hires – Josh Rogers, who’s been a contractor (which means part-time worker; no more than 9 months/year) for several years, and Stosh – who’s been a moderator at Bungie.net, but not paid until recently – about their current jobs, and how they got there. One almost gets the feeling that working at Bungie might be fun! This was apparently posted yesterday afternoon, but nobody noticed until Stuntmutt pointed it out on our forum a few hours ago. (Louis Wu 12:20:42 UTC)
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HPC4L
BeNjA created a HaloPC tribute video, ‘Halo PC 4 Life’, or ‘HPC4L’ for short; it’s a twelve and a half minute long montage that includes gameplay from nearly 50 different players. It’s a labor of love from someone who finds Halo PC to be one of the best games out there. It’s also massive – 218 mb (WMP9 format). You can find a collection of download links on this page at own-age.com. Thanks to both Michael Liu and BeNjA for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 12:06:55 UTC)
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Bungie Spotlights Sort-Of New Hires
Josh Rodgers and “Stosh” recently joined Bungie officially after spending time involved in other capacities. KP drew the short straw and had to interrogate them about their deviant proclivities, super secrets, scrumptious sandwiches and the use of Mat Noguchi‘s rage radiation as a source of warmth. Check it out.
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Bungie Spotlights Sort-Of New Hires
Josh Rodgers and “Stosh” recently joined Bungie officially after spending time involved in other capacities. KP drew the short straw and had to interrogate them about their deviant proclivities, super secrets, scrumptious sandwiches and the use of Mat Noguchi‘s rage radiation as a source of warmth. Check it out.
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Spotlight: Josh ‘n’ Stosh
Bungie recently hired another member straight out of the community in the shape of Stosh. We also hired someone striaght out of our own office, Josh Rodgers. How does that work? What does Stosh do? Why is Shishka such a jerk? Read on for answers to these pressing questions and more.