The Art sections here at HBO have been languishing for FAR too long – I’ve FINALLY cleared out the Miscellaneous Art queue. Beware – there are 64 entries in today’s batch (over 70 if you count variants) – page loading might be rough. I simply didn’t see any options; I’m leaving for E3 in two days, and it was now or never. There are tons of sketches, lots of paintings, modeled stuff, photos of real stuff… it’s an astoundingly large and varied collection. Look at everything – but don’t miss the stuff by Pinkuh, or Paul Davies, or Roger Wilco, or Chris Bryan. (I’m not in any way saying that the only good stuff in this batch came from one of these people. I’m simply saying that with such a huge update, it will be easy to miss things – so these are some to watch out for.) It’s really possible I missed something… so if you submitted miscellaneous art in the last month or two, and it’s not in this update, go ahead and let us know – we’ll look for it. If all goes well, I’ll be doing similar update with Wallpaper tomorrow.

Wonga. If you like montages, swing by Halo2Forum – they started a contest a few weeks ago, and received 135 movie entries, which they’ve narrowed down to 8 finalists. Two of those have already been released on HBO, but the other 6 are new to me – all told, you’re looking at 500 MB of montage goodness. Here’s hoping the bandwidth holds out… thanks, Z.

A note up on Bungie.net warns you that the Halo 2 Game Viewer is undergoing some work, and will be somewhat limited compared to its usual functionality. By next week, a better, more powerful version should be online… please be patient!

Ciarán Walsh has kicked off a blog, and it’s mostly Halo-related – an entry yesterday explores what it might mean to fans if Bungie isn’t the group creating Halo 3. The relative explosion of Halo-related blogs has prompted me to add a new section to our links page – you can now find all Halo-related blogs in one place (and add your own, via our automated interface).

Another video almost made it through the Movie Peer Review Rating System yesterday; we’re releasing versions of it anyway because as I said then, our reviewers seem to have reached a point where NO montage is good enough to make it through… but I believe there’s still a bit of a market for these. This one comes from GT Juggler, and goes by the name ‘How To Succeed at Halo Without Really Trying’. It’s a bit under 4 minutes, 46 mb large in either QT or WMP9 formats, and combines great video, fun editing, and nicely-done syncing (with not a small amount of attitude) to create an entertaining vid. If you like it, there’s a first part (this is ‘part 2’) available at HaloGT.com, as well.

QuickTime: bungie.org | mythica.org | halogt.com
WMP9: mythica.org | bungie.org

Enjoy!

Narcogen looks at the Halo franchise from a slightly different standpoint today – it’s a system staple for the Xbox, yes… but would it have been what it’s become without the help of Steve Jobs? Go read.

The Bungie store is running a new sweepstakes – you can enter to win one of 20 limited edition gold warthog action figures, or the grand prize of a gold master chief statue. No purchase necessary – just sign up. (You must be 18 or older, and live in the US.) First note I saw was from Capt Scope077 on our forum.

Interesting. A mod is starting up for Homeworld 2, attempting to bring Halo 2 ships into the game. (Many of them aren’t even in Halo 2; some of the models are built off descriptions in the novels.) It’s early days yet. There’s a thread here, and the start of a new board here. Thanks, Chris Buhr.

Couple of new Halo CE maps worth looking at – ‘No Remorse’ was inspired by Halo 2’s Outskirts, and has a nice writeup at Halo2CE (thanks, Nuero Ko Neza), and ‘Tributary of Lost Souls’ is a new map from SuperSunny that contains some nice glow effects (thanks, MasterGrief). Check ’em out!

Broncho has released a second Broncho and Friends video – nearly 20 minutes of jumping on the newest levels. If you’re a fan of jumping in Halo 2, you have to grab this. (Use the BitTorrent link if you can.) 44 mb, WMP9 format.

Red vs Blue Episode 57, ‘The Storm’, has been posted for sponsors. This is the last episode of Season 3, and it’s rather large (8 and a half minutes, 70-80 mb or so depending on flavor). You’d think that some storylines would be cleared up, given that it’s the end of the season and all… but you’d be wrong. Great piece. Thanks to Caboose989 for the first heads-up.

There’s a somewhat off-topic column over at Slate from last week – it’s worthy of mention here because Halo 2 is used as an example of a game that leads people to expect more from their entertainment. (The column is a dialogue between Steven Johnson, who believes that TV and video games are causing people to become smarter, by having to follow more intricate storylines, and Dana Stevens, who thinks that the argument is absurd when applied to television, but works for video games.) Thanks, Cornballer.

In early March, MurderDog and friends submitted respawn times for Halo 2 maps; we posted a note about it here. Now, Typher has added this information for the 4 newly-released maps – you can find them at the bottom of the timing page.

No, I DIDN’T forget today’s One One Se7en – it’s still Monday, right? Geez. Good thing, too, cause it made me laugh.

A few days ago, I got an email from BeefySleet, who wanted to point out a video made by a friend of his, TXz Dymdez. I watched it, and was impressed; it was really well-done. I asked him to submit it to the Movie Peer Review Rating System, which had recently been tweaked after complaints of a slippage in quality – I felt that this would be a great first vid out of the gate, post-tweakage. Unfortunately, the movie failed – by the slimmest of margins (it received a rating of 74.75%, passing at the time was 75%). However, I’m releasing it anyway, because I think that it deserves recognition; I think the MPRRS reviewers are tired of montages and will fail pretty much ANYTHING submitted in montage format. (We’ll soon be releasing another failed-by-narrow-margin montage that would have passed at any other time in Halo’s history.) This one was (is) originally available on the Halo2Forum – you can find download links and commentary in this thread. We’re providing another pair of mirrors for the original WMP9 version (33 mb, mythica.org | bungie.org) as well as a pair of QuickTime mirrors (31.6 mb, bungie.org | mythica.org); as of now, these are the only QT mirrors. Enjoy – but realize that it’s possible that we may have reached the end of the golden age of montages.

Dennis Powers has posted the Season 2 Teaser Trailer for the Halo CE Chronicles; it’s available in both WMP9 and QuickTime formats from the downloads page. More maps, more story, blowing stuff up. (Well, not in the trailer. But soon.)

Phoenix_9286 posted another episode of Last Stand – and the forum post gives lots and lots of background about the strip. Sounds like a bunch of work!

Flashman has written up a rebuttal to the recent article at HaloDev about ‘ripping’ – his argument is that creative expression (and free speech) is being stifled by fear of infringement of intellectual property. I almost didn’t post this; we’ve had a pretty substantial email conversation this morning about the subject, and I was pretty sure at the outset that he had simply missed the point of the HaloDev article… but I was wrong; he understood it, but believes that once you release material into the world, you’re obligated to live with what the world does with it. (I STRONGLY disagree with this sentiment; I believe that the intellectual property owner should have final say about the use of their creation… but my disagreement shouldn’t stifle the discussion itself; it’s a blog, there are built-in tools for making your views known.) Go read – then let him know what you think!

Twelve new pieces submitted to the Fan Fiction section over the weekend… poetry, chapters, standalone pieces. Go read!

While the silence from Bungie about the future of the Halo franchise continues, Narcogen explores another possibility – read about it at Rampancy.net.