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Chinese Rocket Launchers
Woohoo! The Weekly Halo Update is over at Battleground: Halo this week, and it looks like weather is in! (Well, falling shell casings, anyway…) Better AI, better explosions, and Craig Mullins artwork! Check it all out at BG:H.
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New Wallpaper AND a Logo
Thanks to Fanatic, who submitted a new logo (in a bunch of permutations) and a new Wallpaper (using the logo). Enjoy!
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Yet MORE new Wallpaper
genohunter, of Clan Hell, drops us another new wallpaper – busy evening. The old and the new… together again. Grab it in our Wallpaper section.
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Hand-separated Halo Logo as Wallpaper
Wow, now THIS is dedication. Kevin Fitzpatrick sends in a newly-built Halo logo… and makes it available in a layered photoshop document, for those who want to tweak it as well. Pretty nice work! Check it out in our Wallpaper section.
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Testers needed for a Halo screensaver
Eldar-colonel writes to say that freedom, of Garden of War, is building a Halo screensaver, and would like testers before he releases it. If you’re interested, sign up on this forum.
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The Ring Gets Built
Wow. Ian Mankowski, who has submitted a few pieces of artwork to HBO in the past, drops another spectacular work in our laps. Titled ‘Under Construction’, it shows the building phase of the Halo – wild. Check it out in our Miscellaneous Art section.
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Audio Interview with Matt Soell at MacObserver
Bryan Chaffin, Editor-in-Chief of The Mac Observer, wrote to let us know that they’ve put up an audio interview with Matt Soell, recorded from the show floor at E3. It weighs in at a bit over 2 megs, and contains 15 minutes of insights into the development of Oni and Halo, and life at Microsoft. Here’s a snippet, where Matt talks about story development in Halo:A lot of the storyline has remained the same, it’s just the game’s depth – there’s more to it now than there was. We really focused on trying to tell a story again, something we didn’t do entirely successfully in Oni, I think we didn’t even necessarily do it all that successfully in the myth games… like with Marathon (going back to that) it was really much more of a… you got a lot more story thrown at you in the course of the game, even though it was in static terminals, you got a lot more stuff to ponder, and there’s a lot more of that feeling, of that storyline developing in Halo now than there ever used to be.
It’s a nice view of how a Bungie employee sees Bungie… check it out.
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Details from Gamestar’s E3 video
Thanks to an intrepid HBO agent in Germany, we’ve gotten our hands on the Gamestar CD movie mentioned a few days ago. Now, we can’t actually put this movie online yet (to do so would violate Gamestar’s copyright), but we can tell you that it contains filmed footage from the first two missions, as do most of the E3 movies. There is a telltale red glow at the bottom of the image, indicating that (like other films) it was recorded off one of the plasma screen displays (they had small halogen lights underneath them, which cast these red glows on the screens themselves). However, the quality is very high, higher than most other stuff out there… and the gameplay is quite good – looks like the player is no novice. There are some interesting tidbits in this film, such as flying Covenant Elites, a look at the newest Covenant race, and a spectacular view of the jeep’s undercarriage. We’ll make this available as soon as we can – please be patient.
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Even the big boys get it wrong
Frequent visitors to this site might wonder why, in the face of repeated assurances from Bungie that there WILL be PC/Mac versions of Halo, there are STILL people visiting the forums (ours and others) and asking about this. Well, it’s because even the folks who SHOULD know get it wrong. At E3, Microsoft distributed an 8 page glossy PR flyer about the Xbox… and a quarter of one page was given over to an ad for Halo. Prominently placed is a green sticker-like note, saying ‘Only on Xbox’. Likewise, a new magazine coming out this fall, ‘Official Xbox Magazine‘, distributed a ‘prototype’ issue at E3, and it contained a 4-page Halo article:On page 1, it says quite clearly that this game will be for the Xbox only – in fact, they go so far as to say ‘Halo for the PC is no more!’ (This, according to Matt Soell, is just plain wrong.) The Halo preview in this mag is an enjoyable read… but it’s chock-full of errors (see how many YOU can spot). It’s high-profile media like this, however, which is driving the ‘no-PC’ hysteria… so next time you see someone asking the question, assume they’ve simply read a poorly-informed source, and explain the true situation politely.
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New fan fiction arrives…
“You’re not paid to guess where the tango was, Alpha leader,” Simmons replied with disdain. He was about to voice the rest of his opinion, but was cut off — very abruptly — as the backpack filled with high explosive triggered.
New fan fiction from Tursas was in our Inbox today; Hermes Trismegistus – Prologue should get you hooked. Our Fan Fiction section continues to grow…
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The Xboxes are here! The Xboxes are here!
They’ve come in! Aginor sends in a pretty slick Bungie webcam shot… looks like the Xboxes have arrived.
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XGR and Halo
X-Treme Gaming Radio put up their First Annual E3 Awards… and Halo didn’t rate. Why? Well, yes, they had a Best FPS category… but they got overwhelmed:This was definitely the second hardest category to decide. How do you limit the scope so you don’t go insane with all the choices at this year’s E3? Should I include Xbox titles? Don’t think so. Ok, one down.
Ah, well… so it goes, sometimes. They DID do an extensive piece on the Xbox System and Titles last week (we missed it, unfortunately), and they LOVED Halo. You can’t win ’em all!
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Strange Misc Art addition
This one’s just… odd. Steen Nielsen submits a bit of miscellaneous art… we’re not even gonna TRY to figure out the rationale.
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Halo SETI Team 7 day stats posted
We wuz robbed… again! The Halo SETI Marines gained a pretty major new member (welcome, -=SHARkY=-), but the units just haven’t shown up. Maybe next week? They’ve held on to position 49 in the Battle of the Teams by the skin of their teeth – comets&cats@seti is just a few units behind. Are YOU helping? Check the 7 day stats page to find out.
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Halo mentioned in Australia’s Sunday Times
Aaron Kelder writes to say that Halo got a small mention in yesterday’s Sunday Times, in Australia – a pretty major mainstream newspaper published in Perth. The article looked at new games to watch for on the PC, Gamecube, PS2, and Xbox… and Halo (and a small picture of the human dropship) were featured. Nice to hear! If anybody gets the chance to scan this article, we’d love to archive it – it doesn’t seem to be online yet (though there IS an article raving about Halo at Gamestock).
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Movies section finally up-to-date
Well, it took MUCH longer than the ‘next few days’ I promised two weeks ago… but the Movies section is finally updated to include all the new E3 footage. Run through it and make sure you didn’t miss any clips! (And if you see one I missed, be sure to let me know.)
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GamesFirst says yes to Halo
Thanks to Dan Rudolph, who noticed another Halo preview over at GamesFirst – pretty positive, overall. Go read it.
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Garden of War opens its doors
Freedom writes to say that Garden of War, a new Halo site, has come online. Check ’em out!
The latest news about the Halo series of games from Microsoft
