My Halo News.com

The latest news about the Halo series of games from Microsoft

  • Yes, Virginia, for the 10001st time…

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    Louis Wu
    in
    It is astounding to me how much mail we receive from people who are ready to believe the worst, despite all evidence to the contrary. To wit: in the past few days, we’ve gotten an enormous number of notes from people who are sure the PC version has been scrapped. Matt Soell popped up last night (LAST NIGHT – not last week, or last month, or last year) on the Rampancy.net forum, to say among other things) this:

    I will take this opportunity to remind the more easily shaken members of the community that THERE WILL BE MAC AND PC VERSIONS OF HALO, no matter how many posts you might see from malicious dolts who “confirmed with a Bungie developer that Mac Halo is dead” or whatever. Don’t let anonymous jerks ruin your day with lies.

    Again – if you didn’t hear it from BUNGIE, don’t count on it. (Even if it comes from ‘The Official Xbox Magazine’…)

  • somethingawful.com goes to E3

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    Louis Wu
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    Thanks to carbon, who noticed an E3 report over at somethingawful.com. Lowtax didn’t like Halo very much:

    The climax-inducing title Halo, which has been causing gamers across three universes to collectively wet their Spider-Man underoos, looked like crud. Take a generic FPS, add the maps from Giants, subtract 80 frames a second, and you’ve got Halo. But hey, you get to drive in a JEEP! Around a LAKE! Wow! It’s as revolutionary as everybody claimed it would be! JEEP + LAKE + ALIENS + GUNS = GOOD.

    It’s a funny read, even if it’s silly.

  • Maximum Halo

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    Louis Wu
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    By Saturday, I was E3’d out – I’d seen all I wanted to see, and decided I’d spend most of the day getting in as much Halo playtime as possible. I wrote up some of my thoughts about the day, and posted them to our forum – there’s a lot more that can be said, but this should at least be a start. Comments are, of course, always welcome.

  • Fan Fiction section updated

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    Louis Wu
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    “The private viewing chamber of the Celestial Palace can be found on the 292nd floor of the main building. It is almost the tallest point on the building: there are energy generators above it. Nevertheless, this building is the tallest on the planet.”

    New fiction by $erial-ki!!A – actually, an overhaul of last year’s work (pulled some time ago at the author’s request). Check out HALO 1, in our Fan Fiction section. The inbox is clearing…

  • Net recap, bonus screenshot

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    Louis Wu
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    Man, I’m so far behind, it’s not even funny. Here’s a recap of Halo stuff from around the web that we’ve missed (thanks to Rampancy.net and Battleground: Halo for some of these):

    News/comic reports

    • Firing Squad caught Joe Staten’s Halo presentation last Wednesday
    • Penny Arcade comments on the size of the Xbox controller
    • MSJolt loved solo play, hated multiplay

    Fan impressions:

    Movie Stuff

    • HaloCenter has added mirrors for the fanfest movies – 1 | 2 | 3
    • FilePlanet now has downloadable versions of the Xbox wmv movies: hi | lo
    • pc.ign.com has more gameplay footage (filmed off the screen at the show) – thanks, Sokar and Sikora

    I’ll be organizing screenshots, updating the movies page, adding new concept art and fan fiction, and putting up my own impressions and comments over the course of the next few days – it’s amazing how much information there was, and how hard it is to slam it all up quickly. 🙂 To apologize for the lag, here’s a bonus shot of the bottom of the Covenant Dropship.

  • We’re back!

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    Crux Fidelis
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    Well we’re all back from E3. Louis is sleeping off his jet lag, that happens when you get old. We’ll be posting a big Halo update later today. Pax.

  • Interview with John Howard (Bungie)

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    Crux Fidelis
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    Thanks to Massa and Harry for sending us word that Xbox.com have a short Halo interview with John Howard from Bungie. It’s in Windows Media Player format. Pax.

  • E3 play report from xbox.ign.com

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    Louis Wu
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    Aardvark points out that xbox.ign.com has updated their Halo section with an E3 report (they’ve put all their notes, starting with the original 1999 Macworld look, on a single page)… but this one has an… um, interesting claim.

    Admittedly choppy when battling it out with four or more buddies, the frantic squad-level action still has a ways to go in terms of visuals. Not quite on par with the PC demo floating around out there, the character models and resolution arenÕ´ as pretty as its computer brethren.

    We’ll put this as simply as we can – the last PC build was in the spring of 2000 – EVERYTHING since then has been Xbox. Jimmy Hoffa is floating around out there somewhere, too… but your chances of running across him are probably better than those of finding a Halo PC build less than a year old.

  • Streamed gloriousness at xbox.com

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    Louis Wu
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    More streaming media – longer, this time, and more scripted – at xbox.com. Gorgeous – if only it could be saved to disk! Thanks to Cartack for pointing it out. (There’s also a lo-res version available.)

  • Gameplay streams at Gamespot

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    Louis Wu
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    There are a whole series of gameplay videos (streaming format only, unfortunately) at Gamespot – thanks to Harry “kick-ass store minder” Al-Shakarchi for the heads-up.

  • Two new mirrors for fanfest footage

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    Louis Wu
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    Apologies for the downtime – I can’t explain it, since I’m 3000 miles away from the folks responsible for this connection, but I’ll get to the bottom of it as soon as I get back – in the meantime, we have two new mirrors for you on the fanfest videos posted recently:

    Enjoy!

  • Halo on CNN

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    Ding
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    Halo on CNN says jon Keegan and TCB on our forums. What next?

  • MacGamer inteviews The Man and the Candyman!

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    Wirehead
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    Kudos to Harry of Oni Central who sends word of MacGamer interview with Bungie’s Studio Manager, Alexander Seropian, and Interface Architect, David Candland. Here’s a great piece:

    Although no time frame was given for the release of the Mac Halo, Bungie assured MacGamer that a simultaneous Mac/PC port is planned. David says,

    “We’re planning on a Mac/PC version. If you ask Mark Sellers or Alex Seropian (about the Mac Port), they’ll tell you the same thing.”

    Moreover, Alex Saropian explains briefly how the Xbox version of Halo will differ from the Mac/PC version as he says, “It’ll be a different version — more misssions, and more online aspects.”

    woooo… Halo for Mac/PC will have more misssions, and more online aspects!!!

  • New shots, and a rather large friend

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    Louis Wu
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    Loud, big, and… big. Really big. We did a LOT of walking today, and really only saw about 30% of the show. We did, however, manage to spend a bit of time in the Bungie area of the Microsoft enclave, and watch some pretty slick Halo gameplay. We noticed some fun driving hijinks in a forested area – you’ll find the shots on the bungie.org E3 coverage page. You’ll also find a few views of a very large model of the Halo marine – nice work.

  • Movie goodness coming soon

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    Louis Wu
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    Wow. Sometimes you just wanna see the game. Freewill filmed all the Xbox goodness last night at Bungie Fanfest V – we’ve been rendering the movies all night. There are three of ’em, and two should be up soon on both the Bungie Sightings page and the bungie.org E3 200l coverage page – but the biggest one will need mirrors before we can touch it. It’s 60 megs, and shows 13 minutes of solo gameplay, with some focus on various weapons. If you’ve got a big pipe, drop us a line – when the list is big enough, we’ll let the mirror sites grab the film, then put it up here, as well. (It’s still a bit away from even being finished rendering – but we’ll do our best to check mail from the show floor in a couple of hours.) If we can’t get any mirrors, we’re gonna have to pass on posting this – it’s just too big for our puny T1. (The two that are going up will probably crush us.) In fact – any sites willing to mirror the OTHER two movies are welcome to do so, provided they give b.org credit for the film. (These, too, we’ll leave up until the pipe collapses under its own weight – if no mirrors step forward, we’ll have to take ’em down when access gets too slow.)

  • Halo Dissected by TeamXbox

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    Wirehead
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    Check out the Halo Dissected article over at TeamXbox as well. Thanks Harry.

  • TeamXbox hands-on report of Halo

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    Wirehead
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    Thanks to Harry for pointing us to a TeamXbox hands-on report of Halo at the Bungie Fanfest V.

  • Fanfest V reports in our forum

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    Ding
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    Don’t forget to check our forum for the latest fan reports from Fanfest V. Bungie Sightings also has a report up.

  • MSXbox’s Fanfest V report

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    Ding
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    Sol sends word of MSXbox’s Fanfest V report including some Halo pics. Go get it. Bungie are also 10 years old. 🙂

  • 15 new Halo screenshots

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    Wirehead
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    15 new Halo screenshots over that MSXbox. Thanks Siva (W’rk). The same shots without Xbox logos can be seen over at Blue’s News. Thanks Anaphiel.