Last week’s Halo Update (originally at Rampancy.net) has been added to the Update Database – the word of the week is ‘Chris‘. The ‘Chris clan‘ has just increased to 5 (Barrett, Butcher, Carney, Hughes, and Lee) – the largest group on the Halo dev team (leading the Mat(t)s – Noguchi, Segur, and Soell) and the Pauls (Bertone, Clift, and Russel). Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, with all those names out there to choose from… how come 11 members of the Halo dev team share three names?

What do you get when you take a marine, you blow up all his planets, and you dump him on an alien artifact with no sleep? Griffon, of Halo Command Central, thinks he knows… and sent us a submission for the Miscellaneous Art section to show us. Check out Halo Dude!

Thanks to Joe Staten, of the Halo Cinematics team, who posted to R.net’s forum today, clarifying a bit about cutscenes in Halo. Nice info:

1. All of Halo’s cinematics will be rendred in the engine.
2. Some cinematics you’ll be able to move while they’re playing (non-interruptive) and some you’ll just have to sit back and watch (interruptive).
3. The “minor” more level-specific cutscenes are the former, the “major” cutscenes are the latter.
4. The Xbox, and, more importantly, the Halo engine has no trouble rendering complex scenes such as, oh, the Pillar of Autumn engaged in a battle above Threshold with the recon picket of a Covenant battle-group. Not that we’re doing that, mind you…

Go check out the whole post for details – but I’m lovin’ the idea of that Pillar of Autumn battle, nice to hear it’s not totally destroyed upon entry into the system (as the original story had it).

fAt1, of MPZ Halo, let us know that we can probably expect PC Gamer UK to hammer Halo in their upcoming E3 article – he spoke briefly with editor Matt Pierce, and it seems they were very disappointed that Halo is currently showing only on the Xbox. (Not horribly surprising, for a magazine that focuses on PC games, but still…)

Johannes Gunnar sends along a desktop pointing out a connection that’s important to him. You’ll find it in our Wallpaper section.

Koontzy sends us part 5 of his ‘Land of the Unknown‘ saga. It’s getting a little odd. You’ll find it, along with lots of other fan fiction, in our Fan Fiction section.

Took a while to find some slow time… but the Screenshots section has been updated – you’ll find the 15 official pics released by Microsoft last week on the Gaming Sites page, and a number of camera shots taken off the monitors at E3 on the Unofficial page. (Most, though not all, of these have already been seen on the bungie.org E3 2001 coverage page.) Enjoy!

Wow. You’d think that they’d take a break after E3… just to calm down. (I suppose since the actual programmers didn’t even GO to E3, it’s understandable that they didn’t… but it’s still surprising.) This week’s Halo Update is over at Rampancy.net… and it’s chock-full of goodies. New multiplayer options, a new team member, more effects than you can shake a stick at, and some PID-like wounded, information-toting Marines. Go read till you drool!

And they just keep coming – Koontzy sends us part 4 of his Land of the Unknown. Read it in the Fan Fiction section.

Gamespy has put up their Best of E3 awards… Halo snagged a runner-up award in the ‘Best Xbox Games‘ category. Xbox.ign has posted two top 5 games lists (one for each editor) – and Halo made Jeremy’s list. Unfortunately, Halo was ignored by Well-Rounded Entertainment and VoodooExtreme – and actively panned by the Stratos Group (4 of the 5 editors called it the Most Disappointing Game of the show). You can’t win ’em all…

Sharp-eyed Aginor once again spotted a nice review – this time from Game Revolution. It’s a first-person account of one man’s E3 playing experience, and it’s a fun read. Go check it out.

Battle of the fiction writers: Anrkey has sent in the next part of his ‘Close Combat’ story – ‘Survival‘. Check it out in our Fan Fiction section.

Vector40 sent in the final part of his 4-part generically titled ‘Halo Story‘. Marathon fans, take note. (Don’t forget, you can read the story in its entirety with the ‘More by this author‘ link.) The Fan Fiction section is up to 150 submissions…

Thanks to Aginor, who noticed another Cliffy B (audio) interview on XGR.com – this time he’s giving his thoughts on E3. The second part has a tiny quote on Halo:

Well, Halo looked very solid, I wonder if a first-person shooter can sell a console from a launch. The markets are tricky out there.

(He immediately moved on to Project Gotham, and online console gaming, and other things.) If you’re interested in hearing what an Epic developer thinks of the gaming scene, check this out.

A new section has opened up at HBO – the Bungie Research Center Photo Archives. You know as much as we do.

Anrkey sends in the story of Private Ryles – ‘Close Combat: Infiltration‘. Check it out in our Fan Fiction section. Nice to see the area is hopping!

We hesitate to point this out, given how some folks tend to overreact to the words of Bungie employees… but it seems pretty clear from here. Matt Soell weighs in on the possibility of internet play for Halo – looks like it won’t happen, at least for the initial release, on the Xbox. NOTE: He specifically limits his comments to the Xbox version:

I should make clear that I’m talking specifically about the Xbox version of Halo here.

Please – don’t jump on this and start crying about how Bungie has cancelled internet play for the Mac/PC versions. Read the whole post for Matt’s full explanation.

E3 articles: hoslap.com was mostly unimpressed by Halo, but thought it nicely showed off the power of the Xbox:

At the booth where they were demoing it, they had set up a multiplayer game between two consoles with 4 players on each console for a total of 8 players. The fact that the graphics were decent and smooth flowing with 4 players per console is a testiment to the crunching power of the XBox.

SourceMagazine.com misses the PC version:

Thanks to nVIDIA graphics technology the game looked good, but not quite as good as it did on a PC the first time we saw it.

Looks like folks were expecting more… (Thanks to Blue’s News for the links)

Gothmog points out a new poll over at Dream Machine, an Xbox site we’d never heard of. “What Xbox game are you most looking forward to?” We took a look around the site, and found a Halo preview, written about 3 weeks ago in an… um… interesting style. Either the author consumed a massive amount of some mind-altering substance prior to writing this, or Halo has SO flabbergasted him that he’s incapable of being coherent… I guess it doesn’t matter, much – bottom line is, he liked it. I think. Check it out! Pax.

Aginor pipes up on our forum, pointing out a GamePC E3 report, which gave Halo their ‘Most Disappointing’ award for the show (tied with the Xbox, in general). They didn’t even like the single-player:

Their flagship game, Halo, was displayed in a four-way split screen (a la Golden Eye). The graphics were choppy and the resolution and detail obviously suffered from the split screen. Single player modes were being shown as well, but it was hard to see the visual differences between it and a game like Tribes 2.

Another victim of hype…