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…

I hadn’t realized the details were going to be released this early… but apparently, MS lips are a bit looser than Bungie lips; a bad thing when lots of people have access to information. Gamepro has put up some details about the demo to be released on Friday – the WMP9 version will be roughly 150 mb, and filmed in gorgeous 640×480 video (with Dolby 5.1 surround sound). Gamepro doesn’t mention it, but there’ll be other formats available, as well. (Not ALL of us can see WMP9 video, after all.) Thanks to Appleicious for the heads-up.

Thanks to Twilight, who was first (of many) to point out the Seattle Times article on Justin Timberlake’s visit to Bungie. I thought about leaving this in the forum, but how could I pass up journalism like this?

He thrilled the Bungie team by signing autographs and multiplaying with them. They, in turn, tried to wow him with their latest game, Brute Force.

I haven’t received the flood of outraged emails from Bungie employees who were shocked at this representation yet… but I’m guessing that’s because they haven’t stopped laughing long enough to type. (For those keeping score, no, Bungie did NOT create Brute Force.)

For those not tuned in to the minute-by-minute goings-on at bungie.net, about an hour ago, SketchFactor announced that the E3 2003 vid (the real deal, not the shakeycam versions floating around the net) will be released this Friday. Start your browsers!

Evil Otto posted a note on bungie.net explaining that the Halo 2 content contest would probably be written up, with winners announced, by early next week. Good luck to all who entered! (I’d like to take this contest-mentioning opportunity to apologize to all Pillar of Art entrants, and those waiting to see the final work product; the pieces we showed at E3 are finally on their way back to the East coast, and we should have judging and announcements ready in the next little bit, as well. We never, ever, EVER thought it would take this long, and we’re sorry. More details can be found at the Pillar of Art site.)

Thanks to iZoD, who reminded us that the Game Critics Awards were announced today. Halo was nominated for several awards, but was beaten out by Half-Life 2 in every category except Best Console Game. (Still, for a studio now devoted to console titles, that’s not a bad honor…)

How many Fan Fiction pieces today? Why, Seven, of course.

• .halo 5: Insertion, by Neo//hack
• .halo 6: Fall of Irvine, by Neo//hack
• .halo 7: Fallen Tears, by Neo//hack
• Taking Halo: (Chapter Four) The Cartographer, by Steele
• Longsword: Desperation- Part Three, by Sterfrye36
• The Fall of Fate: Trapdoor, by ‘Nosolee
• On A Pale Horse: The Reverence, by Silent Hunter

Have you read them all?

Chris Preziotti points out that the Elite Guide now has its own domain name, 1337guide.com. We’ve updated our Links list.

Dr Evil has turned in a rather large banner, which we’ve added to our Banners section. (The preview version is still pretty big, but smaller than the original.)

Four desktop images for you, as well, clearing out the Wallpaper queue that’s built for a week now. Sorry about that…

Seven art bits for you in the Miscellaneous Art section today. Now, before anyone jumps into their email program to write a nasty missive about how this image or that one doesn’t meet our posting guidelines, and how the hell could I post it, blah, blah blah (as seems to happen pretty much any time I post ANYTHING these days)… they wouldn’t be posted unless I thought they should be posted. If you’re not happy with the arbitrary whims of the archive maintainer, find a different place to submit your files (or browse them, for that matter). Grumpy? Me? Never.

Today’s One One Se7en looks at Bungie’s underlying motives… I think Cortana’s pretty sharp, when it comes right down to it.

Whoa – the Fan Fiction submitters have been busy this weekend. 17 new stories:

• Longsword: Desperation-Part Two, by Sterfrye36
• Robotic Deception, by Gasmask
• .halo 2, by Neo//hack
• One Shot, One Kill Part 1, by HunterKiller
• .halo 3, by Neo//hack
• The Fallen: Halo 2 Chapter 1 Section 1, by Hikaru-119
• The Fallen: Chapter 1Part 2, by Hikaru-119
• The Fallen: Chapter 1 Part 3, by Hikaru-119
• The Fallen: Chapter 1 Part 4, by Hikaru-119
• The Fallen: Chapter 1 Part 5, by Hikaru-119
• Halo: The Scythe of Death Part One, by LordofDestruction
• .halo 4, by Neo//hack
• The Fall of Fate: Flee, by ‘Nosolee
• Zudo – Part1: The Creation, by Hunter
• True Purpose(9), by Frensa Geran
• CR.04: Chaotic Reign .04: Light of the Ender (Series Finale), by Neo//hack
• Bloody War: Pluto Disastor, by Ishkabibbl

Get to it…