DOH! SO enthralled was I by the McLees interview that I missed the OTHER new stuff – Rob’s artwork is on display in the Weapons Gallery, and a seventh page has been added to the Concept Art section (MAJOR story spoilers). Check ’em out! (There’s some serious Story Page fodder in there, actually…)

Took a bit longer than expected… but the Rob McLees interview is finally up at Bungie.net’s Tru7h and Reconciliation site. There’s an interesting mix of material – gun stuff, mysticism, and getting set on fire – twice. Rob’s focus was on the guns of Halo, since he was responsible for most of them:

Q: What was your favorite gun in halo? Why?

A: The Elite’s energy sword. Because it’s the only one that behaves like a real weapon – you get hit with it, you die.

Overall, a very good read. Check it out! (Thanks to Lophan for the first heads-up.)

Frogblast, aka Metafire, in his continuing quest to go where no man has gone before, has touched the face of God. Wait… no, that’s not right – he’s touched the ceiling of the Truth and Reconciliation… from the inside of Keyes. (No, it’s not the same. Yes, it’s pretty cool anyway.) Check out the details in our Gameplay Tricks section!

Xerxes writes to say that Halo Orbit, a German Halo site, has put up a preview of Halo (out in just over a month in Germany). If you read German, check it out!

Confused about where you stand on Halo? poena.dare #CP#g created an updated version of his Ring Configuration graphic (originally posted here, a week ago), giving you some sense of perspective for the size of the ring, and your position on it. (The 300 km value at the bottom was chosen because that’s how far Cortana tells you the Truth and Reconciliation is from you at the end of the level Halo – it’s just used to handle the thickness details.) Incidentally, the first post, while having a now-outdated ring config diagram, also has a handy-dandy flowchart showing your travel through the various levels – this can be pretty helpful in deciphering where you are. Nice work!

Warthog Jump movie update: heavy demand has cost two mirrors – maserati.ca and the Junkyard have both dropped out of the hosting ring. (Lots and lots of you grabbed files at those two places – we’re seriously indebted to both of them for the bandwidth!) Additionally, Bravehamster has moved his copy of the movie to a new link. Our Warthog Jump Mirrors list has been updated with all of these changes. Update: Deimosâ„¢ tosses his bandwidth into the ring: from 2100 to 0730 EST, he’s got a Hotline mirror of the file running here. During the day, the server is doing other things… but at night (his time), go for it!

Lophan has posted a Halo @ Tweeter Day postmortem on our forum, detailing the goings-on this past weekend of the Philly Halo Anonymous chapter of the Seventh Column… if you weren’t there, you missed up to 15 players fragging each other on huge bigscreen HDTVs for over 6 hours. (Freewill, another attendee, posted a couple of pics recently.) Wow… a 2 hour, 6×6 CTF game… ouch. Go read it!

Nemesis_007 posted a detailed description explaining how to get to the top of Keyes… and Frogblast took him up on it and got up there, taking pictures all the way. Together, they bring you a pictoral record of the first melee attack on the Truth and Reconciliation (from the outside, anyway). The Gameplay Tricks section shows all.

Thanks to Aginor, who pointed out that the International Game Developers Choice Awards nominees were announced today – Bungie nominations are as follows: Halo for Game of the Year, Marty O’Donnell & team for Excellence in Audio, and Jason Jones & team for Excellence in Programming. Winners will be announced on March 21, during the Game Developers Conference. Kudos all ’round!

The One-Shots page of the Gameplay Tricks section is finally open for business. Sorry for the delay! We’ve added a number of images which have popped up in the last couple of months… I’m sure there are more that we’ve missed. (We’ll pop ’em in when we find ’em.) Feel free to submit your own, but remember… if it’s not something new or different, it probably won’t be posted. (Folks don’t want to look at 800 shots of the Blood Gulch bases being stuffed with vehicles, after all…) It should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway… Here Be Spoilers.

Steve Campbell writes to let us know that both the Suicide Bobs vid and the Halobodies music vid have been mirrored at the Forerunners.org Hotline server. Thanks, Steve!

VoOdOo created a movie (under 5 mb, .avi format) showing how to get the Warthog back to the waterfall in Halo without getting on top of the level. Takes a few grenades, and a chunk of your health… but you’ll probably be doing this after everything’s already dead, so don’t worry too much.

Foxhound turns in Chapter 2 of his ‘Apollo‘ series – someone better keep an eye on that Cortana… Check it out in our Fan Fiction section.

Movie mirrors at the Junkyard… They’ve put up copies of both Halobodies.mov (a music video) and BobSuicide (a snuff film). Thanks to Vector40 for the heads-up.

We’ve added Nemesis_007’s Sidewinder Sneak exploit to our Gameplay Tricks page – use this trick, and your multiplayer opponents won’t know what hit ’em! (As several forumgoers pointed out, this is a general glitch in the Halo physics engine, and can be exploited on several other levels… but none with such dramatic results in a multiplayer game.)

Beam Timing Mystery – SOLVED! Jaime Griesemer (aka Flawless Cowboy, Halo level designer) stopped by our forum to explain why there seemed to be a link between the beam timing and motion freeze in areas of Halo you were never supposed to get to in the first place.

Toward the end of the game’s development cycle you try to fix problems that arise in ways that will have the least impact, so you don’t end up creating more bugs than you fix. It looks like a late change in the vehicle physics for the Warthog, a poorly timed save point (that could trigger just before you were killed, creating an infinite cycle of death) a convenient beam-triggering looping script and a very quick fix have come together and created a brand new online multiplayer game for crazy forum posters.

His post goes on to explain some of the other oddities exploited by Halo fanatics, including the invincible marines on the PoA bridge, and the ability to get into the Shaft. Check it out!

There’s a new top dog on the Halo SETI Marines – Durandal turned in 207 units this week, beating out perennial top crunchers Int_21, *-=SHARkY=-*, and charleya. Nice going! Are you crunching your best? Check the 7 day stats to find out! (Admin note – there won’t be any SETI stats next week. 2 week stats will return on February 25.)

Noticed a new music video over at The Cole Protocol – halobodies.mov was created by Darth Gehenna, and sets Halo cutscene action to Drowning Pool‘s ‘Bodies’. Warning – there are MAJOR story spoilers here; don’t watch this unless you’ve played the whole game. That said, this was made by someone who understands that music videos need to have action coordinated to music… it’s pretty nicely done (and tiny – crunched down to 3.5 mb). Take a look! Update: This, too, has been uploaded to the Psyjnir Complex Hotline server. Mirrors are good. 🙂

Phear X has put up a new video, this one called BobSuicide. 7 mb, 45 seconds, and one singing bob. (Me, I’d have turned the soundtrack down a little.) Mirrors, as always, are appreciated. Update: Mirrored, now, thanks to the gracious hosts at the Psyjnir Complex. Grab your Hotline Client and go get it!

Thanks to foxhound, who sent in Chapter 1 of his work-in-progress, Apollo. Check it out in our Fan Fiction section! (Don’t forget to leave him comments…)