There’s a new gameplay clip available from both IGN AND Gamespot – how’s that for odd? The IGN version is slightly smaller (the hi-res weighs in at 7 mb, to Gamespot’s 8.4) and slightly lighter (on my monitor, ‘washed-out’ is more accurate), but they’re the same clip. Both are available in hi-res QT downloads for subscribers, lower-res wmv streams for the masses. Earliest heads-up to us seem to go to IAmDelta for the IGN link, and Strato for the Gamespot link. (On the IGN Media page, it’s currently the topmost item. On the Gamespot Media Index, it’s all the way at the bottom, labeled ‘Gameplay Footage 1’.)

To all the people frantic because Joe Staten’s wording suggested that Halo 2 might be playable at E3… I just got a phone call from Dolbex, from the show floor. Halo 2 is behind closed doors only, being shown only to press and bigwigs. The average showgoer will not see ANYTHING. Rejoice or dispair, depending on whether you’re going to be there or not…

Marty O’Donnell tosses out a tidbit on our forum – evidence that the early part of the demo wasn’t scripted (for anyone who believed it was). As though we wouldn’t trust Bungie…

Woohoo! For folks waiting on the 3ds max 6 exporter for Blitzkrieg (exporters for max 3-5 have been out for a bit now), the wait is over! Swing on by Cortana.org to grab it. (Thanks, vatoloco!)

Gamespy has posted a very nice quality version of the E3 demo – Direct Feed, QuickTime, 480×360, 227 mb (zipped) It includes conference footage (Halo2-related) from before and after the actual demo, including the announcer’s revelation that the release date is tattooed on his arm. If that’s not enough, there’s an even HIGHER quality version – 337 mb zipped, 640×480 QT, also free. As of this moment, there is NO wait on the Fileplanet public servers. (That will likely last about 5 minutes, though, so hurry.)

The hefty content of the morning is an interview with Pete Parsons over at IGN. He does a lot of dodging… but he DOES answer a few questions, and there’s some really tasty info in there. Go check it out! Thanks, GhaleonEB.

Alucard found an image in the Gamespy Screenshot collection that’s more of a Wallpaper – but it’s an interesting image, nonetheless. Check it out!

One One Se7en continues the bird jokes – at least, I HOPE that’s a joke.

Halo: Resolution speculates that slang won’t change too much in the next 500 years.

I thought this was pretty clear, but from the quantity of mail we’ve received, apparently it’s not. You CAN preorder the Halo 2 Limited Edition box; it should be available almost anywhere games are sold. Two online biggies, EB Games and Gamestop, are both selling it. (EB Games is offering free 2-day shipping, so they’re a better deal, so far.) The EB Games page says ‘ships to US Addresses only’ – nobody’s said yet whether this is because EB Games doesn’t like shipping overseas, or if the LE box won’t be available outside the US. When we know more about this, we’ll certainly post it.

El Bastard got to playing with Flash, and created a series of countdown timers, based on the newly published Halo 2 release date of November 9. His first attempt was here, but he made smaller ones here and here (I like the second one the best). Later in the evening, we heard from Jurriaan Wittenberg, who created this puppy. (Americans might be confused by the periods – we use commas there. That number is a total seconds countdown.) If you’re interested in keeping track of how long it’s going to be before you can get your hands on Halo 2… grab one of these!

Alex Edelman has written up a screenshot analysis of the new ODST shot on Bungie.net; you can find it on his [HOH] website’s Article Page. He adds that other shots will be analyzed as well.

Darksage has added both an audio transcript and a play-by-play descriptive transcript of the E3 2004 demo footage to the Halo Source Knowledge Base. If you had trouble hearing what you were looking at, or don’t have the bandwidth to download the movies, go check this out!

Reiyou has been working on a Halo RPG for a long time; it’s losely based on the d20 system. He’s finally put up a website about it. Go check it out!

This looks pretty plausible. It’s nice when FedEx is more efficient then expected, don’t ya think? 🙂

Another Direct Feed movie – pretty good quality. This one’s from Gametrailers.com – thanks, Boneho Chane. WMP9, 14.3 mb. Update: And another from Gamershell – 13.8 mb (zipped – same 14.3 mb unzipped; it’s probably the same film), HUGE pipe. Also WMP9. Thanks, Recoil.

Thanks to the IRC channel, which stumbled across another free Shakeycam version of the E3 demo footage, this time hosted by Game Informer Magazine. It’s 105 mb large, in MPEG format. Quality is quite good, though the flash photography is a little distracting.

Gholsbane, operator of our sister site Myth.bungie.org, took a look at the new Halo 2 stuff and noticed something few who hadn’t followed Bungie before Halo would- there’s something in one of the screenshots that we may have seen a long time ago. More details can be found here.

So if you’re poor, and you don’t have a Gamespot or IGN subscription, you’re limited in your choices for video downloads of the E3 demo. Really the only game in town is the TeamXbox vid – and that’s sort of small, and it’s in pieces. Well, mrsmiley put them all together, and did some nice resizing – and we continued the process. The end result is a 65 mb, 480×360 video, which you can download from mythica.org via BitTorrent. Who says nobody’s looking out for the little guy?

Deimos Fawkes remembered to go looking for the good stuff; the Xbox Press page has a zipped archive of 7 of the recent screenshots (everything at Bungie.net, except the ODST shot), in a 3.7 mb package. Why would you want this? Oh, because they’re 2560×1920 pixels… with no watermarks, maybe?