Lawrence.com has posted an article about Halo 2, and the road that led to it (starting way back in the 70’s with Pong). Nice read! (Thanks, Mothergoat.)

Wondering what that funky pumpkin to the right is all about? It’s Boxer’s way of paying tribute to an important duty. Click on it and read more!

Sketch has written up some extra details for the Bungie Halo 2 Launch Fanfest – what’s on the agenda, who can go, when and where it is, and so on. If you’re in the Seattle area, this should be a must-visit! Thanks, Target4Hire.

Another snippet from nilerogers.com today – Heavy Price Paid (1:30 long, 1.4 mb for the music itself). Great screenshot to look at in the Flash presentation, as well. Looks like Richard Heerey was first this time.

Not too long ago, Bungie posted a Theme Builder on Bungie.net – an HTML template for creating new themes for their 7th Column site. The problem is, most designers work better in some sort of visual mode – jumping back and forth between their design and Bungie’s HTML (in both the main file and the style sheet) can get confusing. To the rescue comes Rip-Saw. He’s created a layered photoshop document (zipped, 282K) with every element on its own layer, nicely labeled – adjust things to LOOK as you want them to, and then just translate back when you’re finished. Should save loads of time. He apologizes for the fact that there “may be a few errors in the labeling, and one or two CSS elements were left out due to me not being able to figure out what they were for”. A small price to pay for such a convenience!

RevDotNed let us know about an interview with community stalwart Miguel Chavez over at xblGames.com – it’s a great read from someone who’s been a major part of the Bungie fan community for most of the time there’s BEEN a Bungie fan community. Check it out!

Whew! After a lot of messing around, we’re finally ready to accept votes for the 343 Guilt O’ Lantern contest! Now, keep in mind, there are 85 separate entries – and you’re only allowed to vote once. Therefore, you should put it off until you have a few minutes to peruse the choices – it would be no fun if you only got through half of them! (Voting is open for a full week – through next Tuesday – so don’t feel you have to rush to get it done.) The entry page should give you an idea of the best way to navigate through the entries – PLEASE READ IT. (I know a lot of people just want to get started, but if we start getting mail like ‘OMG I messed up can you let me try again?’ we’re gonna be ignoring it.) Limits – you can only vote once per IP address. This stinks for families sharing a single address – but them’s the breaks. So: Go read the instructions, then browse through the pumpkins and pick your favorite 5. (That’s how many votes you get.) We’ll be tallying points to find the top 3 – with a runoff vote if necessary down the road. And thanks to BOLL for his invaluable help in the last 12 hours!

Two great interviews at HomeLAN Fed today – Pete Parsons discusses what makes Halo 2 great, and Rikki Khanna, of AKQA (the folks behind the new halo2.com website) talks about what went into making the site (and its unique language). Thanks, John Callaham.

Hehe – Bomber of doom found a nice little egg on the Halo2.com site. It was noticed a few days ago that if, after viewing the console and contents, you closed down the holo link (pressed the purple button below the screen), you’d see a pair of covenant craft take down a human battlestation. When it first appeared on the site, it was marred by the absence of the Earth graphic in the background (once the battle started, the earth went solid white). That’s been fixed, and you can watch the station be destroyed, and then burn up in the atmosphere. If you click the top covenant craft after the destruction, though, before the pieces hit the atmosphere, you hear Joe Staten taunting… well, humans, in this case, I guess. (Turning the console on and off again at this point will produce one more small animation – that of a Pelican burning up in the atmosphere.) Lots of nice work there!

Halo 2 continues to wow the world press – Finland’s Pelit gave it a 96/100 (two points more than they awarded the original). Thanks, Scanner Darkly.

KNIGHTOFDRAGONS was first among a dozen to point out the new Halo 2 Luggage Tag as well as the Halo 2 Backpack recently added to the Bungie Store. The pocket-emptying never ends!

The Junkyard continues their series of level analyses from a military perspective, with Part VIII – Two Betrayals. As always, an interesting read. Thanks, Mhaddy.

Absolute0 pointed out a competition on Xbox-Exodus – create material that can be hosted on the site, you’re entered to win strategy guides, t-shirts, or DVDs. Details are on the page

Two new Halo articles at Gamespy today – the first is an interview with Lead Designer Jaim Griesemer about Halo 2’s vehicles (lots of tasty info, though he dodges the ‘spoiler-like’ questions), and the second is a talk with Tyson Green (aka Ferrex) about Halo 2’s weapons (again, plenty of useful info about stuff you’ve heard of, with a studied lack of spoilers). Go read ’em both! focused7 beat everyone, including Gamespy’s editor, in letting us know about these.

A couple of days ago, Spideroptics pointed out that prices for Halo 2 in the UK are rising – a month ago, the norm was £29.99, now £31.99 is more common, and there’s even a company that’s selling it for £44.99 – cheek! (Many of these companies have raised their prices in the past week or so.) Is this just profiteering… or is this related to the alleged price-fixing in the Netherlands?

Wow… this must be a big deal to someone… I’ve gotten mail from Microsoft’s PR firm AND from Bungie employees about this, AND it’s on Bungie.net’s front page. Gamespy is running a new Grudge Match – Which are you more excited about, Halo 2 or Half-Life 2? Right now, Halo 2 is winning – but it matters to a lot of people that it stays that way, so go vote! (Bottom left corner of the page.)

Quick update on the 343 Guilt O’ Lantern competition… We have a total of 85 submissions, and building a mechanism whereby you can pick the best 3 without getting totally overwhelmed is non-trivial. It will almost certainly not be finished tonight – hopefully, it’ll be ready for public consumption tomorrow. There’s still plenty of voting time left, so don’t worry – we aren’t in danger of missing any prize deadlines… yet. 🙂 Thanks for your patience!

Speaking of akba, his site is hosting the next in Boxer’s Adventures in Disaster comic series. This one is a poster for an upcoming movie. I’m not sure I want to see it.

Two new snippets at Nilerogers.com today – Flawed Legacy (the actual snippet is 1:50, 1.7 mb) and 4th Movement of the Odyssey (snippet is 2:10 long, 2.2 mb, with a nice screenshot). Thanks to all who wrote in – akba was first.

Yet another msn-based (read: Macs not welcome, non-IE browsers not welcome) movie – If you visit the MSNBC Technology and Science Front Page, there’s a link in the upper right corner, under ‘Also in the News’ – it reads “Video: Sneak Preview of ‘Halo 2′”. It’s a short interview with Brian Jarrard and Pete Parsons, talking about what’s new and improved with Halo 2. Thanks, Angel Navarro.