Thanks to several more viewings of the Halo 2 trailer (and a little bit of help from Marty O’Donnell), we’re happy to bring you a full, corrected transcript of the E3 Halo 2 trailer. As an added bonus, it includes a transcript of a small bit that showed in the theater during the E3 showings, but not at the press conference. Thanks to Cybrfrk for his help with this section. A look over this transcript will reveal several interesting tidbits of information to the observant visitor. Deciphering the meaning of that last sentence is left as an exercise for the reader.

It was up a bit longer than it was supposed to be – blame deanero and his fine hospitality for the 12-player lanfest that ran for 5 or 6 hours this evening. The Bungie Trivia contest has been taken offline at this point, and we’ll be announcing the winners as soon as SketchFactor gets back to Seattle and settles in – probably Monday. Over 300 people took the online test – with almost a third of those attempting to take it more than once. (Shame on you! 🙂 ) Thanks for your participation… and again, the winner(s) (and their prize(s)) will be announced soon!

Randy Pitchford of Gearbox and Michel Bastien of Bungie were interviewed by Gamespy’s Livewire at E3 2003. The interview, in audio format, is available for download from Fileplanet; it weighs in at 32 mb. Thanks to Scott Velasquez, of Gearbox, for the heads-up.

The next batch (another dozen pictures) of E3 Fanfest pictures has been added to our E3 2003 Gallery. Take a look!

Check out the E3 2003 coverage page for the first of our fanfest pictures. We’d forgotten that updating pages takes time away from other stuff… like playing Halo, so it’s gonna take us a bit longer than we’d expected to get ’em all up. Look at it this way – there’s something to look forward to.

A bit disheveled – we were at the Beverly Hilton until 2 am last night with SketchFactor and Achronos – but not really the worse for wear… I’m going to attempt to process some of the photos we have this morning, but to start with, you can read a couple of fanfest writeups by forum regulars Shishka and Skeletor. As a point of interest, about 200 of you have taken the online trivia contest so far… and it’s proving to be somewhat more difficult than I’d expected. The high score so far has more than a dozen wrong answers…

Quick note about the 15% discount available at the Bungie Store: it seems that there’s a glitch in the registration system. If you’ve already got an account at the Store, you’re given the option to enter a promo code when you log in (which is where you put in the 15% off code)… but if you fill your cart, and THEN create an account, you never get the promo code option. Solution for the short term: if you don’t have an account… create one BEFORE ordering anything. Once it’s created, log out… THEN order. This information will probably be rectified in the not-too-distant future – everyone at Bungie is sorry for the hassle. (Anyone who DIDN’T get the discount will be taken care of; there are timestamps on all orders. Not to worry – Bungie’ll take care of you!)

Apologies for the up-down-up status of the servers here – it’s hard to monitor stuff from the E3 floor. This is just a quick heads-up that the Bungie Online Trivia Contest will be available in a bit under 2 hours right here. Check back!

Leavin’, on an airplane… but one last news post before I go. We got word from Emildux about new CobaltNova happenings:

This summer Arizona will be home to two of the biggest and entertaining Halo parties in the nation whose prizes will total $7500. You may have heard of these NO ELIMINATION æ´¯urnaments already but some recent website updates and news has come up so we’re out in force pimping to the public. Below you’ll find the pertinent links, dates, unique aspects, art contests, and more. Thank you for your interest.

• $2500 HALO: Running Riot Invitational 3 (14 June 2003)
• $5000 HALO: Killtacular Classic (Mid-August/Early September)

Both events will take place on Saturdays. There was more – much more – in the email he sent… but it’s all available on the webpages… go look.

Forum regular Shishka has written up his impressions of Bungie goodness seen during his first day on the E3 floor – and it sounds like he’s still coming off the high. Go read it and drool if you’re coming to E3, weep if you’re not.

A second news item on Bungie.net discusses the online trivia contest to be hosted here at Bungie.org, starting tomorrow night. The trivia contest, and most of our other E3-specific coverage, will be accessed on our E3 2003 page – right now, most sections are offline, because there either isn’t any content or you’re not allowed to see the content… but keep your eyes peeled!

Woohoo! Just in time for the fanfest, Bungie is running a special at the Bungie Store – 15% EVERYTHING. The offer is only good on Thursday, starting at 12:01 am PDT (7:01 am UTC – that’s less than 6 hours from now) and ending at midnight (7 am Friday UTC). Go read the details on how to get in on the deal at Bungie.net.

The Randy Pitchford interview we mentioned yesterday has come to pass… and gawd, is it full of information. Everything from how Gearbox got the job to build Halo PC in the first place, to how they’re getting around some of the stickiest problems in the conversion, to what WASN’T hard… wow. Go read this. Thanks to TankRamp, of the venerable Battleground: Halo, for the heads-up.

I guess even the Fan Fiction writers got caught up in the E3 content craze – there are only four stories for you today:

• True Purpose(4), by Frensa Geran
• ONI Black Ops Part Five, by Havok
• Foresaken Forefathers Part Two: Righteous Rebirth, by Havok and AlphaBravo343
• Halo 2: The Wraiths part two: New Friends, by Wiley Kimball

Go read ’em, before there’s more…

And 8 art pieces for you… check the Miscellaneous Art section.

So much Halo 2/Halo PC goodness… we’ve neglected the staple parts of this site for too long. First up, desktop images. There are 5 of ’em for you. Check the Wallpaper section. (There are some real classics in there…)

Nick has posted the full 1280×960 un-watermarked versions of the 6 Halo 2 shots released yesterday on our forum. (ShackNews put them up yesterday in this format, as well – it’s nice when sites are willing to distribute press material without branding it or altering the size…)

IGN has put up 8 clips, over 40 megabytes worth of material, of gameplay in PC Halo, including views of new maps, and the use of the fuel rod cannon. As of right now, it’s not Insider-protected. Go check ’em out! (Thanks to Bullseye for the heads-up.)

In a stunningly sudden series of events, another Halo egg has been found… all in a day, sort of. Read the story on the Eggs page. A weird symbol, noticed 17 months ago, brought up again and again over the past year and a half… and then BOOM – identified (well, almost) by a threesome of Bungie employees in the span of a couple of hours. A nice sideline while the madness of E3 swirls around us!

While we were sleeping – er, crashing, Bungie put up another desktop on their Wallpapers page. (Last image on the page.) You know… that sure looks like S’pht writing in the background, to me…