My Halo News.com

The latest news about the Halo series of games from Microsoft

  • What’s Next for Bungie?

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    HBO
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    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)

  • Second Game In The Works At Bungie

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    narcogen
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    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?

  • Second Game In The Works At Bungie

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    Rampancy – Se7en Years Of Halo
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    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?







  • Conference Comments Cause Cutscene Controversy

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    narcogen
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    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!

  • Conference Comments Cause Cutscene Controversy

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    by

    Rampancy – Se7en Years Of Halo
    in

    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!







  • Humpday: NeoGAF

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    Bungie.net’s Recent News
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    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.

  • Halo Heads 3 – Wishlist

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    HBO
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    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)

  • Mute Radio Episode 3

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    HBO
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    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)

  • What Bungie Artists do outside of Bungie

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    HBO
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    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)

  • Tools and Icons

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    HBO
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    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)

  • HPC4L

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    HBO
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    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)

  • Bungie Spotlights Sort-Of New Hires

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    narcogen
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    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.

  • Bungie Spotlights Sort-Of New Hires

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    Rampancy – Se7en Years Of Halo
    in

    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.







  • Spotlight: Josh ‘n’ Stosh

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    Bungie.net’s Recent News
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    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.

  • xXx is their water bottle.

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    HBO
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    Great interview with Carbon, discussing their win over Final Boss in Orlando, up over at MLGPro.com. They’re a little cocky… but hey, they just came off a tremendous win, they can be forgiven. Thanks, 3Suns.(Louis Wu 21:21:02 UTC)

  • Enough for a very large house.

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    HBO
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    Holy Art Overload, Batman! The Wallpaper section has been updated with 49 new entries (and, if you count variants, over 60 new images) – some have been posted on our forum, but others are brand-spankin-new, and many are GORGEOUS. Go look ’em over – you’ve got your choice of image sizes ranging from 800×600 up to 1920×1200! I just love some of these. (And I love love LOVE that the queue is empty!)(Louis Wu 20:40:53 UTC)

  • Taken For Granite.

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    HBO
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    As you can probably guess from the title, Stuntmutt has taken a long, hard look (you might even call it stone-cold) at the title of the newest Halo novel. See what he came up with in today’s One One Se7en.(Louis Wu 16:04:21 UTC)

  • MSU Famous Maroon Band plays Halo

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    HBO
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    The Famous Maroon Band of Mississippi State University played a bunch of video game music for the MSU/SC halftime show on August 31 – and somebody YouTubed it. The whole clip is 7 minutes long, but the Halo bit is over in the first minute. (Nice formation, as well!) Thanks to Alt, in irc.bungie.org’s #hbo, for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 15:57:44 UTC)

  • Snow ((Halo))

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    HBO
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    Spider-Man originally submitted this song to Podtacular, but as far as I can tell, they never released it. It’s a song called ‘Snow ((Halo))‘ – a parody to the tune of Snow ((Hey Oh)) by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Quality isn’t great – but it’s pretty funny! 3.8 mb, mp3 format.(Louis Wu 15:50:24 UTC)

  • On the Seventh Day, Bungie Created…

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    HBO
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    Heh – fun. Brannon Boren, who, as a consultant with Microsoft, helped oversee the integration of the Halo story into various products, noticed that the Wikipedia entry for Bungie Studios suggests that the Halo Bible is not a real item, but rather a metaphor for the large collection of info about the Haloverse. Due to recent vandalism, he can’t even correct the entry. It’s real, folks. Thanks to Narcogen, who noticed this on Rampancy.net.(Louis Wu 15:09:17 UTC)