Yet more new content at Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation: another pair of storyboards, and new concept art (the phantom, and the Covenant ‘bus’). Grab ’em while they’re hot!

Ever wondered what makes community fixture Pallor tick? The Junkyard continues its ‘Spotlight’ series by shining the beam on Meg. Go read about her past as a figure skater, and her future as… well, wherever her present actions lead. Or something.

Once upon a time, there was a hunt for an easter egg dubbed the Megg. It generated a HUGE amount of traffic, and forum regular Shishka created a FAQ, of sorts, for it, housed over at Subnova. Unfortunately, in the great database crash of last month at SN, it was lost… but Shishka is trying to rebuild it. If anyone has a cached copy they’d saved, anywhere along the line, he’d love it if you mailed him a copy. Thanks!

Ciarán posted a note on our forum to say that his Halo 2 Screen Saver has been updated in anticipation of tomorrow’s trailer release. (He also has some info about the website it’s served from – some nice use of RSS there…)

A couple of very nice entries in todays desktop offerings – check the Wallpaper section. (There seem to be a new rash of people not bothering to read the image posting guidelines – if you submitted something, and it didn’t show up, this is probably why.)

Quite a mix for you today, in the Miscellaneous Art section…

Yesterday, we posted a note about a story published in the Seattle Times which contained a couple of entertaining mistakes. (Entertaining, that is, for those who know Bungie well. To the rest of the world, it’s doubtful they were even noticed.) I saw several disturbing posts on our forum today, expressing outrage that anyone would make these mistakes… but what really got to me was a note someone sent, containing the rant they had mailed directly to the author. In it, they insulted her personally, maligned her physical appearance, cast aspersions on her sexual orientation, and (almost incidentally) attempted to correct her mistakes… unsuccessfully. I’d like to take this opportunity to suggest that the absolute worst face you can put on a Bungie fan is one contorted with this sort of puerile rage – when you act this stupidly in public, you reflect badly on ALL Bungie fans. As Gawyn put succinctly in our forum, “please act like adults when you contact the press because you, in some fashion, represent the community at large, and we want to have a good reputation.”

In case speculation on Halo’s storyline isn’t your thing, we’ve got 7 pieces from Fan Fiction authors that branch out a bit from the canon:

• .halo 8: Forgotten Realms (Series Finale), by Neo//hack
• The Mars Annihilations , by Janglurevil7
• Wrong or Right part 4, by harley
• The Fall of Fate: Exploration , by ‘Nosolee
• Ishkabibbl’sStory/Humanity’sLastHope/BloodyWar(Part One), by Ishkabibbl
• Flood Survival, by Forever Forerunner
• Halo: The Scythe of Death Part Two, by LordofDestruction

Get to reading…

Grumpy because the last Story page update happened before E3? Feeling deprived of the wild speculation of your fellow HSP junkies? Cry no longer – mnemesis has posted a hefty collection of cogitation and cerebration for you to mull over. Get to reading!

Thanks to Strato, who pointed out some astonishingly high-resolution versions of the first 6 Halo 2 screenshots over at the Xbox.com press section. The zip file is almost 40 megabytes, and for that you get some Bungie logos (EPS format, so you pick the size), and 6 TIFF files that weigh in at 2560×1920 pixels each. (Check the alpha channel of any of ’em for a funky bonus.) If you’re looking for hi-res shots to create artwork from… these are your friends. (Remember that yellow text in the brute shot that looked like S’pht writing? You can read it now.)

In case you thought there weren’t enough updates on Bungie.net today, mehve turned out a really wicked-cool (and I don’t use that term lightly) desktop for the Halo PC Wallpaper page over at the Tru7h and Reconciliation website. To put it simply… it rocks. Check it out.

In response to a user request, some long-needed search features have been added to the Movies database. You can now search multiple fields, in multiple ways. Should make life a bit easier finding what you were looking for…

Jonesin’ for still MORE Halo 2 goodness? SketchFactor notes that two new storyboards from the E3 demo have been added to the Tru7h & Reconciliation site; they’re not the same ones that showed up in last month’s OXM, either. Check ’em out!

The latest story to grace the front page of Bungie.net (bumping a picture of yours truly off after only 16 hours – thanks, mehve) is a bizarre tale of background research, in which several members of the Halo 2 dev team spent a day playing with real guns, courtesy of the US Special Forces. In the words of Robert McLees, “It was an amazing experience and it has fueled my brains with tons of cool ideas.” Go read it. And realize that your Halo 2 experience will be that much more realistic because of it.

Yesterday, Ross Mills pointed out that the archive of our very early days was offline. A quick email to Aaron Davies, though, fixed the problem – thanks to him, some of our earliest history is now permanently stored right here on this site. Take a walk down memory lane (or see it for the first time, if you haven’t been coming to this site for 4 years)! Gah. This reminds me… we missed our 4-year anniversary. 🙁

Atomi writes to point out that bungie.de, a German Halo (PC/Mac) site, is back online. Check it out!

It’s bizarre… but it’s small, so what the heck. synide created a sub-4mb movie (QuickTime format, now), showing (in his words, mind you) ‘super death drop bomb melee charlie in the trees type stuff’. Timing’s pretty nice. Check it out. (You may have to watch it a couple of times; there are fun views from both screens.)

The new One One Se7en is part of a 3-strip series; I’m sure it was supposed to happen in a single week, and I’m sure the fact that it’s starting on a Wednesday instead of a Monday is entirely my fault… but you’ll just have to maintain your sense of continuity over the weekend, sorry.

IMG’s ‘One on One’ feature between Glenda Adams (Westlake programmer) and Tuncer Deniz (Inside Mac Games editor) is coming to a close, since Adams is moving to Aspyr Media… but there’s one last episode, with a wrapup of the work going on at Westlake. Halo gets a very brief mention:

Halo is actually up and playing on the Mac, and we’re merging in some of the latest PC code changes right now to keep it current.

Good to know! Read the rest of the interview at Inside Mac Games. (Thanks to travis for the heads-up.)

SketchFactor, a whirling dervish of updating action, has put up FanFest Flashback – Part 2, covering the day of the fest itself (with the chaos of the day nicely captured by the writing style). Check it out. (There are also links to a trailer (in both WMV and QT formats) of an upcoming Fanfest documentary put together by Mr. Smiley… Sketch’s links are a bit funky, but they’ll probably get fixed at some point, and figuring out the real links shouldn’t be too hard.) Update: Links for the documentary trailer movies are fixed. It waren’t Sketch’s fault; looks like the site scripting has gone a bit wonky…