There’s an interview with Nathan Walpole, better known as bentllama around the Halo community, one of the Canadian animators on the Halo 2 team, over at Simpatico/MSN. Nice read! Thanks, Farhang.

Gamespy continues their saturation coverage with an interview of Tyson Green, aka Ferrex, level designer for Halo 2. If you’re wondering what’s different about Halo 2 (in comparison to Halo 1 level design), read this!

Couple of new articles at IGN today – the Countdown article is about the I Love Bees phenomenon, and the ‘Training Exercises’ that happened on Thursday around the US. And an article called ‘Bungie.net’s Battle Plan‘ gives you an overview of what’s going to be available from the Stats section of Bungie’s website – the stuff you can see for yourself, now, plus some pretty astounding information that’s NOT available to he public yet (check the last page of the article). Definitely worth a read! (Google beat everyone in letting us know about these – sorry.)

Ryllick was the first to point out that today’s Ctrl+Alt+Delete is Halo 2 related… in fact, might explain a few mysteries.

The Library, a compendium of Halo information, has been updated again, this time with an I Love Bees section (including a summary of the game). If you’ve been waiting for someone to make it clear, go read!

1UP.com has two new Halo 2 pieces up for you to read – the electronic version of the December 2004 EGM article (with 10 new screenshots – top of the page, added Wednesday), and the 1UP Preview, an entirely NEW piece (as far as I can tell) with lots of good info but no new screens. Check ’em both out! (Thanks to Ben Vera for the heads-up on the 1UP piece.)

Shorty (Will) noticed some new magnets over at the Bungie store – they’re adding stuff at a rapid rate these days!

clarksbrother managed to secure an interview with a Bungie employee for his local TV show – and is asking for questions to pose during the interview. If you’d like to have your ideas considered, jot ’em down and add ’em to the database!

Tons and tons and tons of new Halo content at G4TV today:

• Halo 2 Council: The Kutcher Connection does a sort of ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ thing with the Halo 2 Council members… except it’s one degree.
• Halo 2 Continues Music-Video Game Tie-In Trend ties together… um, music videos and games.
• Nile Rodgers on Producing Halo 2 Soundtrack is another interview with Niles Rogers.
• New A.I. for the Halo 2 Guy looks at the advances in AI over the first Halo.
• Art as Game: Halo 2 tries to pin down what makes Halo great.

In addition to that, there are streaming versions of all four Halo 2 Day Red vs Blue commercials (Flash and WMP formats) – and if you can’t stand those, you can grab 320×240 downloadable QuickTimes of the two we hadn’t already posted: Sick Day (1.8 mb) and Back From the Future (1.1 mb). Wonga. Is that enough? Thanks to Ben Vear for starting off the search.

Frankie’s posted the last Bungie Weekly Update ever over at TeamXbox. He talks a lot about the new Stats page at Bungie.net (and what’s coming down the road – trust me, he’s not kidding about that face flying off stuff), and about reviews that are coming out, and about what’s gonna happen next week… but mostly, he’s just saying goodbye to a tradition. I’m very sad the Mister Chief art isn’t showing up… but I’m guessing that’ll get fixed soon enough. Go read. Thanks to KNIGHTOFDRAGONS, for being the first to actually point out where this was.

Marcie O’Donnell, long-suffering wife of audio god Marty O’Donnell, has put down on paper (well, a hard drive somewhere, anyway) her thoughts about the upcoming release of Halo 2. What it brings, what it takes away. How it’s different from what we had before. It makes some assumptions (like, there aren’t any female players – not true, but I suppose in the overall picture, it’s a decent-enough generalization), but it’s funny, and it’s true, and it’s worth reading. If you’re a player, read this and remember the women who support you (wives, girlfriends, mothers). Maybe even show this to them and have THEM read it. And then reflect on how lucky Marty is to have found this woman.

If you’re going to a Halo 2 event… bring a camera. Your pics might win you cool stuff from Major Nelson. Thanks, Cybrfrk.

For folks still downloading pieces of Heart is a Lonely Hunter we’ve got part 5 online for you today – 28 mb, QuickTime format, from both mythica.org and bungie.org. Enjoy! (Last piece will probably go up this weekend… unless I forget.) Don’t forget to visit the website for more info!

Nice writeup on the Cold Pizza event by Dolbex, of MLGPro.com. Some good pics, too. (Free registration required for the pics.) Go look! Thanks, nof.

Ramon Ochoa, a man who “hated first person shooters with a passion until Halo came along”, sent along a couple of pictures of some new construction in his home (here and here), plus a bonus pic of the stealth invader. Amazing what this game generates in its fans…

Web Comics related to Halo today (that we know of):

• Queen of Wands – funny, barely safe for work (thanks, AZC)
• Carzorthade – Nightmare Armor related… I can sympathize with the sentiment (thanks, NiceMissMayonnaise)
• Don’t forget w00tness – the Halo series continues (and gets serious)

I’ll bet good money that there are more, as Tuesday approaches. Update: Sippan wanted to make clear that he, too, had a web comic with Halo material – that it was 5 months ago is irrelevant. Sippan – consider yourself linked.

Conner, a stalwart of Clan Plaid (a group of Old Ones, in Bungie terms) managed to capture yesterday’s Cold Pizza footage on ESPN yesterday – there’s a nice interview with Sundance Digiovanni, of Major League Gaming, with some Halo 2 playing in the background. If you don’t blink, you’ll see our own Miguel Chavez, the king of BS, wearing a Clan Plaid shirt and whaling away in the first 15 seconds or so. The video is 23.1 mb large, in QuickTime .mp4 format, and you can grab it from files2.bungie.org. (I just tested it on a Windows XP machine with a current version of QuickTime (NOT Pro), and it works fine, so please don’t send us mail telling us it’s broken. There’s no time right now to re-encode, and no bandwidth to host a second copy if someone ELSE re-encodes… remember how much you’re paying for this, folks!) Update: Conner points out that if you’re having trouble playing the .mp4 files, grab a copy of VLC Media Player – it works flawlessly with mp4s, it’s free, and it’s available on pretty much any platform (you might have trouble finding an executable for a Timex Sinclair, but otherwise…). I know nobody reads these news posts any more… but really, the file DOES work, the link is NOT broken, and if you’re having trouble, it’s on YOUR end. Thanks.

XLNC is saying goodbye to Halo HUDless screens – with a pretty darn impressive sendoff. Check out his 11th, and final, batch of screens – the man has an eye for this stuff. Awesome.

W00t! Halo 2 posters – FINALLY AVAILABLE at the Bungie Store. (There’s also a calendar.) Check ’em out! (Thanks, Ryan.) Update: And a hat! (Thanks, Stormwraith)

Boxer created a very special HBO-hosted Adventures in Disaster today, commenting on Spike TV’s Ultimate Gamer presentation (it showed last night, and will be on again on both Saturday and Sunday). It also owes a tip-o’-the-hat to One One Se7en – where do you think that joke came from originally? So while we’re tipping One One Se7en, we might as well put up today’s strip – because there are enough Stuntmutt-related news posts already today, and because burying this one and the shot it takes at our forum isn’t such a bad thing. So read ’em both.