Rampancy

SketchFactor has put up a preview of this year's Winter Bungie Pentathlon, detailing some of the games to be played (Halo 3 and Pictionary) as well as, uncharacteristically, a list of staffers broken down into the four teams: Grizzled Ancients, Old Skool, Middle School, and Newbies. This year, the studio is so big that Marty O'Donnell is finally a Grizzled Ancient.

Next Generation took a nostalgic look back at Stubbs the Zombie in an online article repurposed from Edge Magazine.

Since the trailer was released, the time frame of events in the upcoming Halo Wars RTS have been hot topics for discussion. Did it happen before the Halo FPS games or after? Over a long period of time, or a short one? Where did those battle rifles in the trailer come from if Halo Wars is supposed to chronicle early Human-Covenant conflicts?

Now, Ensemble has published a two-page timeline for the Halo universe (one, two) that gives the backstory. Also, starting with this month's Update, they'll be posted on the front page of HaloWars.com instead of in the forums.

Currently the timeline covers the period from 2160 (early civil conflicts) through 2552 (the events of Halo 1-3). The ship featured in Halo wars, UNSC Spirit of Fire, was built in 2473 and refitted in 2520.

Curiously enough the timeline doesn't actually say when Halo Wars begins or ends, although previous statements have indicated 2531, which on the timeline corresponds to the Battle of Harvest.

Newsweek columnist N'Gai Croal interviewed Bungie's Joe Staten about the Halo 3, Halo 2, and the Halo movie back in August of 2007. The first part is online now. Croal picked out one blockbuster revelation by Staten to highlight in a second post prior to the publication of part two, however: that the faceless Master Chief wasn't really going to be the film's protagonist.

In the film, the other characters begin to comment on Master Chief's anonymity, like "Who is he?" and "What's his story?" He becomes a really wonderful source of mystery, a sort of anonymous problem solver. So we definitely worked on that. In the final version of the script the Master Chief was certainly absolutely critical to the film, but there were other characters around him which carried most of it, that did most of the emotional heavy lifting. The Master Chief was there in support of their story.

Staten also does confirm something that many fans have long suspected, and that even some people "in the know" have expressed doubt at: that Halo 2 was supposed to be the end of the story. Staten says, "we didn't think we were necessarily going to make Halo 3. I mean, we made Halo 1 not knowing we were going to make Halo 2. So we started out designing Halo 2 not thinking that we were going to make a Halo 3." Halo 2's third act, even though it was different from what we got in Halo 3, could have ended the story. Halo 2's cliffhanger simply made it impossible to stop there.

All those who think there must be a Halo 4 should take heed of that.