X1Zero has a pretty large collection of action figures he’s trying to get rid of as a lot; he’s coming to the Halo community first, before heading to eBay. Check out the post – there’s an amazing array in there!

Don’t look at this politically; just be amused by the photoshopping. Thanks, Jon Keegan. Update: Eep, sorry – we’ve been asked to pull this.

Bryn Casey’s been busy – three new images in his Gallery here, including a nice version of the image he created for our poster giveaway last week. Check out Earthshot, The Guardians, and Elites! Gorgeous stuff.

I’m not sure I understand this, but you’ll find a small Halogen update at Mod DB (a screenshot and some story flavor) – that is, for some reason, exclusive to Mod DB; that is, you won’t find this info on Halogen’s website. …okay. Thanks, crazedweasels.

QuickTactical and crew has been creating the machinima series Soldiers of War for some time – Season 2 just kicked off, and Episode 7 (the first of the new season) passed the MPRRS. Things are looking grim for the Americans… It seems silly to me that we host 2, 5, and 7, but not the rest – so I’ve put all 7 episodes up for download, in both QuickTime and WMP9 formats. You can get descriptions of the videos, as always, at the Epic Films website; we’re just providing a one-stop download shop. (A couple of the QT versions are not quite done yet – but you can check back in the next couple of hours for them.) Enjoy!

Sometimes, Bungie posts weird interviews. Their latest, with Intern Jon Cable… it’s one of those.

Paul Davies continues to pour in the artwork; today we’ve got a gorgeous Scorpion tank for you. I’d be a little nervous about that barrel crack…

There are a couple of very cool wallpapers (one in a multitude of variations) for the First Contact Half-Life 2 mod over at the First Contact Forum – they were done by Major.Dump, whose Halo creations are justly reknowned. Swing by and take a look! Thanks, AngelicLionheart.

Heh. Back on April 21, the Weekly Update contained this tidbit:

It looks like the Mister Chief T-Shirts are actually happening.

As you can see on the webcam page (or here, if it changes), these look to be ready to go. Thanks, serpx.

TheWereSloth points out that Heroes & Heretics ‘Off the Record 1: Malone Strikes Back’ is now available to the public on their website. It’s rather odd… it’s a ‘what if?’ episode, where you can see what might happen if Malone got stupid. Well… stupider. He also wanted to make sure everyone realized they could download Episode 5 – Operation: Clenched Bowels… their numbers were down significantly from older episodes. This saddens me a little, because Ep 5 was actually very good. You can get BOTH episodes, in either WMP9 or QuickTime formats, at this location. What are you waiting for?

Lots and lots of new content at MLGPro.com – more Video on Demand from New York, changes to the 2006 Pro Circuit Schedule, a new Player of the Week (Defy), a look at the future of competitive gaming (and where Halo stands), and a Halo-relevant Blog of the Week from shiruken. Thanks, 3Suns.

IGN has an article discussing The Influence of Literature and Myth on Videogames, and Halo gets a chunk of coverage. (Not all of it makes a lot of sense; Starhammer is cited as an influence, but not for its Elite-like Laowon, or its Halo-like superweapon, but for the fact that its protagonist is named Jon, referred to early on as 6725416. It’s as though nobody bothered to read it…) Give it a look for its general concepts.

SketchFactor has posted a long interview with Lee Hammock and Simon Bisley, two of the talented content creators for the Halo Graphic Novel; it’s a great read. (There’s also a ton of artwork embedded throughout, some of which hasn’t been seen before – at least at this resolution.) Go look!

Captain Spark pinned down another bunch of dialogue snippets – this time exclusively Brutes. Grab them from his website, or browse them in our Dialogue Databank. (There’s one I can’t really decipher… it actually sounds like ‘sentient chariot’, but that makes almost no sense, unless the brute was riding Spark around the level…) Update: LeFishy suggests ‘Vegetarian!’, which sounds very right to me.

Paul Davies turned in a new image yesterday – and he’s back today with ANOTHER piece. This one doesn’t have the usual polished feel his creations generally exude… but as he says in his comments, the roughness conveys nicely the difficulty of the Chief’s situation. Go look!

What do you get when you mix a much-missed weapon with Stuntmutt’s prodigious punmaking capabilities? Check today’s One One Se7en to find out.

Jillybean snagged a nice analysis post off our forum yesterday, for the Halo Story Page – a polished look at the effects of knocking out Installation 04 on the Halo network. I’ve HTML-ized Bronzite’s PDF for easier online reading. Check it out.

GamePro talked to Kevin Unangst, Microsoft’s director of global marketing for Games for Windows, and Chris Donahue, director of business development for Games for Windows, about Halo 2 for Vista (thanks, 3Suns) – and Engadget talked to Shane Kim, General Manager of Microsoft Game Studios. Beyond the known tidbits (Halo 2 will be released a little beyond Vista’s launch, a map editor/modding system will be bundled, etc), there was a bit of information about Xbox 360/PC cross-platform interoperability… and the word is rather bleak. Unangst said that making the game cross-compatible would require “somebody to re-code the Xbox version”, which was unlikely. Donahue said something similar, but was a bit more optimistic… but Kim told Engadget flat-out no:

Will Halo 2 have any interoperability when it’s released for Vista… ?

No, we’re just bringing over the Halo 2 experience over to Vista. It will support the online services though, that we’re bringing over to Windows Vista.

I suppose it was a lot to hope for… but it’s probably better to be aware that it won’t happen than to be horribly disappointed when they don’t succeed in making it happen.