Poll smash; Gamespot wants to know what 2004 release you’re most looking forward to? Halo 2 is currently on top; if you can stomach the enormous ad to get in, help make sure it stays there. (Thanks to Alucard for pointing it out.)

Noobs – you gotta love ’em. Halo: Resolution shows you why.

Another mirror has appeared for the Making Of Halo 2 vid – WorthPlaying has put up copies on all its servers. (Three are in the US, one is in Sweden.) Don’t miss this one! Update: Halo Orbit, in Germany, has put up a copy, as well. Check the mirror page! Update 2: and 6 MORE mirrors, from Gamers Hell. We’ll keep adding mirrors to the page, as they come in; just keep checking back if you haven’t gotten it yet! (No more updates here, though – this entry’s gonna get too long.)

In honor of the release of Halo: First Strike in bookstores today, Bungie has put up a brand-new wallpaper (in four sizes), using Lorraine McLees’ gorgeous cover artwork. Check it out!

Wow. Dave Mertz, lead designer on Halo PC for Gearbox, resigned as of yesterday. Details can be found in this forum thread on Gearbox’s forum. Hmm… I wonder what this means for the 1.03 patch, or the Editing Tools package? Thanks to progamerz for the heads-up.

For those interested in the AGP Fall Halo Championship, rapture has rounded up a bunch of links for you. Good stuff!

Woohoo! My Red vs Blue DVD came in the mail today… and man, this thing rocks. I’m not gonna get very much work done in the next bit here… All I can say is, if you haven’t already ordered one of these, go do it. It’s worth the bucks.

Back in September, an interesting documentary was shown at the X03 event in France. It was a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Halo 2, created by Film Oasis, the company behind ‘Inside the Xbox’, a documentary shown on the Discovery Channel last summer. Unfortunately, the only version available has been a shakey-cam piece filmed at the show by a French journalist – better than nothing, but still unsatisfying. If you had access to a Best Buy in the United States, and were willing to spend $19.99 for a new controller, you could get a bundled DVD that contained the hi-res version of this film… but it wasn’t available on the net. Until now. Thanks to Jim McQuillan at Film Oasis and the legal eagles at Bungie, we’re able to bring you this video, in all its hi-res beauty. There are two versions; for the big bandwidth folks, there’s a 100 mb, 640×480 copy, and for folks on smaller pipes, you can grab a 38 mb, 320×240 version. We’ve put up a pair of copies of each (on files.bungie.org and mythica.org) – but we’re always happy to spread the bandwidth pain; if you’ve got the space, grab a copy, and send us the link, we’ll add it to our Mirror page. This one’s worth seeing. Update: Two new mirrors for each size – Coerce.net and Subnova have both tossed their hats into the Bandwidth ring. Thanks, guys! Update 2: Brian Towne has put up BitTorrent seeds for both large and small versions – grab these if you have the client; not only will they be faster, but they’ll be less strain on our mirrors. Thanks!

Today’s Guest One One Se7en strip comes from Traumatised Marine – and points out the soldier Bungie managed to overlook when they populated the Pillar of Autumn.

Once again, a 3-day hiatus in Fan Fiction posting has led to a ridiculously-sized update; 31 stories. (There was one more, valid one… but it was too big, and the database couldn’t handle it. Hopefully, the submitter will resubmit in smaller chunks.)

• Final Fate: Mankind’s Despise, by Jinkaiden-XI
• The Final War: Battle for Installation 02 [4:2], by Awacar
• The Last Battle of Earth prt 2, by Tlaloc
• A Rough Beginning, by Covie Armada
• Up to E3, by Steve
• The Last Forerunner(before part 1): Toward Another Halo, by Sentinel
• Covenant Grunt Morphology, by FOrunnER
• Out of Phase-Chapter 1, by BlackValkyire
• An HBO Christmas, by Jillybean
• The Exchange – Part 1 – Empensa’, by Dispraiser
• The Second Ring (Part 3), by Jason
• Earth’s Destruction Chapter 1: The Invasion, by Sentinel
• ES04 – Eternal Sunder (part 04): The Song of Sunder , by Wado
• Fight for New Tatley (Chapter 5: Arriving, Departing), by CoLd BlooDed
• Never Deny, by CoLd BlooDed
• The Serran part 1, by Tlaloc
• Fight or Flight: Chapter 4, by teemus
• Jonson Chronicles: Chapter 1:Boarding Parties, by Mattt
• All Roads Lead To Sol…Just Make Sure To Bypass Mars: Chapter 13, by S7N
• All Roads Lead To Sol…Just Make Sure To Bypass Mars: Chapter 14, by S7N
• All Roads Lead To Sol…Just Make Sure To Bypass Mars: Chapter 15, by S7N
• The Fallen: Halo 2 Chp 6 Sect 2 Just Passing By, by Hikaru-119
• All Roads Lead To Sol…Just Make Sure To Bypass Mars: Chapter 16, by S7N
• MSOG: Chapters 3 & 4, by Sprtn117John
• Unarmed, by Steve
• You’d Never Know, by CovieKilla
• All Roads Lead To Sol…Just Make Sure To Bypass Mars: Chapter 17, by S7N
• Closing with the Enemy Chapter 5 Night Approaches, by monitor101
• The Harvest Campaign Chapter 3, by Fleet Admiral
• Last Battle: In The Line Of Duty, by JOTD Fanfiction Team
• The March of the N00bs – Special Features, by Wado

Try not to miss Jillybean’s HBO Christmas or Wado’s March of the N00bs wrapup. (There’s tons of other worthwhile stuff in here, too, of course…)

It’s been quite a bit of work, and not all of it’s visible… but mnemesis and Finn have overhauled the Halo Story page, with new design tweaks, new organization, and new information. Poke around, see what you can find… there’s some good stuff in there!

Today’s One One Se7en has MC a tad fixated on the review score Edge Magazine gave Halo PC. We know how that can be. (On a more sober note, for all the folks who misinterpreted my One One Se7en note yesterday – the truth is, I LOVE this strip. I wouldn’t complain if Stuntmutt turned in enough for a strip every single day; we’d figure out a new system for posting Guest strips, if that ever happened. Thanks for the offers to host Guest strips, and the threats in support of Stuntmutt… the strip isn’t going anywhere, and I’ll try to be less subtle in my tweakage in the future. Maybe.)

The sad thing about today’s Halo: Resolution is that we’re STILL getting emails like this, more than 2 years after the release of Xbox Halo.

MaverickJ stopped in this afternoon to post the results from the AGP Fall 2003 Halo Championship. HP Darkman was unseated by Walshy of the Psycho Soldiers, with Clockwork and Strange Purple taking 3rd and 4th spots. Forum regular Break Point was there, and wrote up his own take on Day 1 – there’s a version with boatloads of pics, and a version with links to the pics (so you can download them at your leisure, if you’re on a slower connection). Sounds like a pretty interesting experience all around! Update: Lion, a member of Break Point’s team, wrote up a bit (and posted some pics), too.

progamerz stopped by our forum to point out that a new version of HaloSpy has been released; this build adds screenshot viewing capabilities and autojoin and game autolaunch functions. Check it out!

Ross Mills found a Master Chief model for Unreal Tournament 2; you can find download links (and a screenshot of the model) in this thread on the Atari forums. His feet look a little funny… but maybe that’s just the angle.

Not long ago, it became clear that the submissions for One One Se7en were quickly outstripping our chance of hosting them in a reasonable timeframe, and the Archive was born. (Next week’s Archive update already has nearly 30 strips in it.) It took much of the pressure off the Guest queue… but Stuntmutt hasn’t been allowing that queue to shrink; he’s added a Holiday category (Thursday’s Guest strip was postponed for a Thanksgiving strip) and he’s been pretty consistent with the Sunday strips (there’s one today, in fact), bumping the Guest strips patiently waiting for that Sunday slot. Yes, his commentary is right on the money. Yes, he’s more consistent at making you laugh than the guest strips are. Yes, yes, yes, it’s true that many Guest strip creators simply cut and paste from Stuntmutt’s artwork. But what is One One Se7en all about, anyway? Isn’t it about empowering average joes to create a piece of a highly successful comic? Shouldn’t Stuntmutt realize that it’s not about him? Should there be a vote to remove the regular strip altogether, replacing it with Guest strips, to give joe sixpack a fighting chance? Well, while you’re thinking about the answers to these questions, go read today’s Sunday strip. And please, please, PLEASE… don’t try these lines yourselves in a bar.

Wonga. Now that the DVDs are done, Red vs Blue is back at work; filming on season 2 has begun, and they’re shooting for a mid-December release of episode 20. (They’re also hoping to have another Public Service Announcement between now and then.) Thanks to Ross Mills for the heads-up.

18 stories for you since the last Fan Fiction update (36 hours ago):

• The Battle for Phi Delta: Part 1, by witelancer
• 500 Men. 1000 Covenant. 1 Spartan. 1 Building. , by Steve
• Fight or flight: Chapter Three, by teemus
• The Battle for Phi Delta: Part Two, by witelancer
• The Last Forerunner Part 1:The Battle of Halo , by Sentinel
• Warriors of Valour: Part 5: Revenge is sooo sweeet, by Ghost Sniper
• The Plot Thickens…, by D
• Saving Fifth Street, by Ajax
• A Marine Named Peters: Rodriguez’s Gifts, by GLADIATRRR3000
• The Battle for Halo:The Takers, by Sentinel
• The End of the Covenant: Part I, by Tlaloc
• Appocalypse-Sector5, by FF Echo
• Halo 2 Rise of a Hero Chapter 6, by CovieKilla
• The Battle for Phi Delta: Chapter 3, by witelancer
• The Battle for Phi Delta: Chapter 4, by witelancer
• The Pelican Bond, by Mauricio Flores
• The Last Battle of Earth, by Tlaloc
• The Second Ring (Part 2), by Jason

Seems like it’s speeding up, if anything…

Ross Mills has whipped up a short Christmas-themed film for you; only 26 shopping days left! Timing’s nice, though it would have been more impressive had there been no need to manipulate pitch… it’s 1:21 long, and available in both WMP9 and QT formats (4.8 mb each, you choose). Don’t hate him for the suffering he’s caused… think of the artistic value. Update: DOH! I thought this was a remake of ‘Carol of the BOBs‘, an older Marathon-based piece… it wasn’t. It actually USED Carol of the BOBs as the soundtrack. My bad. (Sorry, Jester!)