A new Marathon film (in Marathon recording and .mp4 formats) called Spectral Falls and a new map pack called Fabrecation are available at Marathon: Aleph One. Check them out!

Gravemind has produced what may well be the single most exhaustive commentary on the Halo series to date, covering not only comparisons to Halo 1 and Halo 2 including each weapon and every vehicle, but single player and multiplayer level design as well. He caps it off with a series of mostly level-headed suggestions for Halo 3.

Despite his predilection for citing some pretty sketchy sources, he also is familiar with the analyses of Finn, Mothergoat, and Mike Miller.

Certainly not everyone is going to agree on all points; as he confesses himself in the HBO forum post linking to the article, he generally prefers Halo 1 over Halo 2 although he did enjoy the latter, and many of the suggestions amount to "make Halo 3 more like Halo 1". Luckily Frankie has already said that at least in some respects this is going to be true.

There's almost too much meat here to pull out any one morsel as representative, but since Campaign is close to my heart, one particular suggestion tastes pretty good to me:

As for the stage designs themselves, they should be huge. The stages in Halo 2 were supposed to have been really big. In fact, it was claimed that you could fit the entire Halo 1 Campaign into a single canyon in Halo 2 — an obvious exaggeration. However, due to the huge draw distances upwards of 13 or 14 miles made possible by the 360’s graphics capabilities (see below), there’s no reason that the stages cannot span a rather huge distance. Most of the larger stages in the previous games were only a couple of miles long from beginning to end, so I fully expect the stages in Halo 3 to be two or three times as long as that at the very least. Furthermore, I expect the outdoors stages to have parts that are much more wide open than even what was seen in Halo 1. It’d be neat to test your sniping skills against enemies that are a kilometer away. I want to see something that gives the effect of Assault on the Control Room or Two Betrayals, but on a much grander scale.

Be warned: this is a very long and detailed read; it might have been easier to digest as a series than as a single long piece, but here it is. Take breaks if you have to, but it's well worth it.

Captain Spark fired up his Halo dialogue website at the end of last month, upgrading to a new CMS-- PHP-Fusion. Be sure to check it out, even though he admits the current design is a placeholder (now where have we heard that before?). He's also working on an IWHBYD skull tutorial which I'm sure many will be eager to check out.

... and to Windows and Linux as well. Appleswitch at Source.bungie.org reports that a Mac OS X conversion of the Marathon sequel scenario Rubicon, appropriately called Marathon: Rubicon X, has been released. It requires the latest version of the cross-platform Aleph One engine. Rubicon was originally released in 2001. The X conversion features new high resolution art as well as new and updated maps.

The latest Bungie Spotlight is on former community member, current Bungie staffer Cunbelin, and his contributions to Halo 3:

Well My most recent item was to remake the classic human crate, better, faster, stronger! Well better at least. I've got a long list of those kinds of items both to be brought up to the Halo 3 standards and new ones to be created. I'd go into specifics but things shift almost daily in priority so it's hard to say what else I'll be working on.

Cunbelin also gets kudos for copping to being a "rampancy snob" in the early days of his Bungie fanhood. The check's in the mail.

MBO pointed out an unusual Gamasutra postmortem article from last summer which I don't remember seeing before. It's not on a game itself, but of an update to a game. In this case, the 1.5 and 1.5.1 updates to Myth II produced by Project Magma. It's a two-parter; one details what went right and the other what went wrong. Don't know what Myth is? Head to Get Myth and get the updated demo for Windows or Mac OS X.

One of the best total conversions for Marathon, Tempus Irae, has gotten an Aleph One facelift: new high resolution textures, alternate soundtracks, netmaps, even a sequel-- the works. Check it out at source.bungie.org.

• Aleph One, the open-sourced version of Marathon for Windows, Linux and Mac OS, has a new release out.
• The HD QuickTime version of the Halo 3 trailer documentary is back up at Microsoft.
• KP profiles known Cortana-hater Jillybean at Bungie.net.
• Peter Moore told Major Nelson the Xbox 360 will get an update to add another 20 titles to the list of backwards compatible games.

The Video Games Live website now has a trailer up to show the "fun, energy, interactivity and excitement of the show". It's availble in WMV (hires) and MOV (lores) formats.

The next VGL is 8 PM at the Merriam Theatre in Philadelphia on June 3, 2006. Tickets are on sale now. The VGL website has a page that shows all future shows with date, time, venue, and ticket sales links.

Like the Play! event that was held in Chicago this past weekend, VGL features music from Halo.