Well we’re all back from E3. Louis is sleeping off his jet lag, that happens when you get old. We’ll be posting a big Halo update later today. Pax.

Thanks to Massa and Harry for sending us word that Xbox.com have a short Halo interview with John Howard from Bungie. It’s in Windows Media Player format. Pax.

Aardvark points out that xbox.ign.com has updated their Halo section with an E3 report (they’ve put all their notes, starting with the original 1999 Macworld look, on a single page)… but this one has an… um, interesting claim.

Admittedly choppy when battling it out with four or more buddies, the frantic squad-level action still has a ways to go in terms of visuals. Not quite on par with the PC demo floating around out there, the character models and resolution arenÕ´ as pretty as its computer brethren.

We’ll put this as simply as we can – the last PC build was in the spring of 2000 – EVERYTHING since then has been Xbox. Jimmy Hoffa is floating around out there somewhere, too… but your chances of running across him are probably better than those of finding a Halo PC build less than a year old.

More streaming media – longer, this time, and more scripted – at xbox.com. Gorgeous – if only it could be saved to disk! Thanks to Cartack for pointing it out. (There’s also a lo-res version available.)

There are a whole series of gameplay videos (streaming format only, unfortunately) at Gamespot – thanks to Harry “kick-ass store minder” Al-Shakarchi for the heads-up.

Apologies for the downtime – I can’t explain it, since I’m 3000 miles away from the folks responsible for this connection, but I’ll get to the bottom of it as soon as I get back – in the meantime, we have two new mirrors for you on the fanfest videos posted recently:

• blam.psyjnir.com
• HaloEmpire

Enjoy!

Halo on CNN says jon Keegan and TCB on our forums. What next?

Kudos to Harry of Oni Central who sends word of MacGamer interview with Bungie’s Studio Manager, Alexander Seropian, and Interface Architect, David Candland. Here’s a great piece:

Although no time frame was given for the release of the Mac Halo, Bungie assured MacGamer that a simultaneous Mac/PC port is planned. David says,

“We’re planning on a Mac/PC version. If you ask Mark Sellers or Alex Seropian (about the Mac Port), they’ll tell you the same thing.”

Moreover, Alex Saropian explains briefly how the Xbox version of Halo will differ from the Mac/PC version as he says, “It’ll be a different version — more misssions, and more online aspects.”

woooo… Halo for Mac/PC will have more misssions, and more online aspects!!!

Loud, big, and… big. Really big. We did a LOT of walking today, and really only saw about 30% of the show. We did, however, manage to spend a bit of time in the Bungie area of the Microsoft enclave, and watch some pretty slick Halo gameplay. We noticed some fun driving hijinks in a forested area – you’ll find the shots on the bungie.org E3 coverage page. You’ll also find a few views of a very large model of the Halo marine – nice work.

Wow. Sometimes you just wanna see the game. Freewill filmed all the Xbox goodness last night at Bungie Fanfest V – we’ve been rendering the movies all night. There are three of ’em, and two should be up soon on both the Bungie Sightings page and the bungie.org E3 200l coverage page – but the biggest one will need mirrors before we can touch it. It’s 60 megs, and shows 13 minutes of solo gameplay, with some focus on various weapons. If you’ve got a big pipe, drop us a line – when the list is big enough, we’ll let the mirror sites grab the film, then put it up here, as well. (It’s still a bit away from even being finished rendering – but we’ll do our best to check mail from the show floor in a couple of hours.) If we can’t get any mirrors, we’re gonna have to pass on posting this – it’s just too big for our puny T1. (The two that are going up will probably crush us.) In fact – any sites willing to mirror the OTHER two movies are welcome to do so, provided they give b.org credit for the film. (These, too, we’ll leave up until the pipe collapses under its own weight – if no mirrors step forward, we’ll have to take ’em down when access gets too slow.)

Check out the Halo Dissected article over at TeamXbox as well. Thanks Harry.

Thanks to Harry for pointing us to a TeamXbox hands-on report of Halo at the Bungie Fanfest V.

Don’t forget to check our forum for the latest fan reports from Fanfest V. Bungie Sightings also has a report up.

Sol sends word of MSXbox’s Fanfest V report including some Halo pics. Go get it. Bungie are also 10 years old. 🙂

15 new Halo screenshots over that MSXbox. Thanks Siva (W’rk). The same shots without Xbox logos can be seen over at Blue’s News. Thanks Anaphiel.

Thanks to Dan Rudolph on our forum for noting that the Xbox will be released on Nov 8th at a cost of $299. For more details read this news item over at over at Yahoo.

Has Louis gone yet?

I’m leavin’, on a jet plane… heh. I’m heading out to the airport in 20 minutes, to fly out to LA in time for tonight’s Bungie Fanfest… today’s news will be rather light, but we should make up for it over the next few days. Keep an eye on Wirehead – he’s been acting funny recently.

That Gothmog – he keeps on top of the polls, he does. He just pointed out a poll over at the Official Xbox Magazine site:

With so many amazing Xbox games already announced, we can’t decide what to put on our first cover. Which of the following would make you buy our premiere issue?

One of the options is ‘Halo exclusive – Best-looking console game ever.’ It’s currently trailing the ’50 reasons to buy an Xbox’ option… you know what to do.

In the rush for E3, little things get forgotten… we’d like to wish Jaime Griesemer a very Happy Birthday today! Pax.