Every other Monday, we feature an individual who is a positive and active member of the Halo community. This week, the spotlight turns to Flamesword!

Question: What’s your gamertag and its origin?

Answer: My current gamertag is OpTic BEARD FS. My original gamertag was Flamesword, and this is the name that I compete under. Since my last Halo tournament, I joined the OpTic Gaming organization and have been coined the, “OpTic Beard” for my great beard growing skills. To keep everything together and have a fitting gamertag I created OpTic BEARD FS. The FS in my gamertag stands for Flamesword.

Flamesword’s origin is the Yu-Gi-Oh! playing card Flame Swordsman. Unfortunately, the tag was too long so I shortened it to Flamesword25 for my first gamertag.

There are only three weeks between E3 and the Rooster Teeth Expo, which means we always have to do a bit of hustlin’ (no, not that type of hustlin’) to get ready to come and see everyone in Austin. This year, we grabbed designers, producers, a Hoberman and threw them onto a panel, grabbed some in-house professional Halo players and threw ‘em on a truck with original Xbox consoles and TVs, brought Halo: The Master Chief Collection (for your eyes only), and we flew down some exclusive gear. A few weeks later, we were in Austin and ready to party with all of you.

RTX is a special event for many reasons, most notably that nearly every attendee is a Halo fan. As a result, it’s easy to strike up conversation with just about anyone, and easy to make way too many new friends. We’d like to thank each and every one of you who came to our panel, stopped by our booth, checked out Halo: The Master Chief Collection, or bought some RTX 2014-exclusive gear. It was quite a celebration, and we cannot wait to see everyone again next year, hopefully sooner, as we’ve got a few stops left on this tour. If you’re reading this and you still haven’t made it out to RTX, make sure you come next year, otherwise you’ll have to pay the price of reading my synopsis and seeing all the cool pictures once again, knowing that could’ve been you.

RTX 2014 allowed for some pretty fantastic moments and memories. Here are some of our favorites:

Halo: The Master Chief Collection Panel

Dennis Ries and Max Szlagor

Moderating the RTX panel was truly a treat – as I said on stage, I was joined by an awesome group of guys who had some great stories to tell about both new and upcoming experiences, as well as classic development tales. Chatting and brainstorming with Max Hoberman before the panel began allowed me to nerd out on every word of Halo-2-dev nostalgia, and I hope that we’ll be able to share more stories from Halo 2 and Halo 2: Anniversary development later this summer. If you haven’t seen the panel and you’d like to avoid spoilers, you can watch it below! The panel includes a walkthrough of Halo: The Master Chief Collection’s unified “master menu,” an early look at control schemes, some original paper designs from Halo 2, a full walkthrough of Halo 2: Anniversary’s Ascension, and a special treat at the end. Enjoy!

With the announcement of Halo: The Master Chief Collection coming this holiday to Xbox One, we’d love to start the Master Chief love off right with your amazing fan art! Show us your best work representing the Master Chief’s journey from Halo: Combat Evolved through Halo 4. Share it via email to community[at]HaloWaypoint.com or on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram with the hashtag #HaloFanArt and perhaps we’ll feature it in a future Fan Art Focus installment!

One-man Army

By Based Wizard