HBO has pointed out the latest installment in the Psyjnir Complex's Shallow Throat series of tabloid prognostications on Halo 2.

Bungie's own Matt Soell has posted a Halo National Tournament report from El Bastard in Florida:

Everyone knows people who have played Halo through on Normal, but seem to always get their asses handed to them during LAN play. Usually, this person feels that their tactics are superior and it was the game that failed in the execution. Such a player might, say, jump into a warthog, drive close to a heated battle, then hop in the back and try and use the LAAG to wipe out his foes. In theory, such a guy should get a few kills, right? Well, theory or not, this interesting tactic resulted in a grand total of 3 kills. You'd think wandering around shooting rockets randomly into each base might have improved his chances by a factor of 5 at least.

Be sure to check it out, some interesting stuff in there.

XenGamers, which used to be called CoreMagazine, has put up a story on the Halo 2 announcement in New York and the trailer that we are now waiting 21 days for:

With Halo passing the two million mark in global sales, Microsoft unveiled the first in-game trailer for the much-anticipated sequel. The trailer starts off with the Master Chief, assisted by his AI construct Cortana, deep inside a spaceship. Arming himself with an assault rifle, he makes his way though the corridors of the ship, as mission objectives from the first game flash across the screen, each with a Completed after it. Upon entering the ship's hangar, huge Covenant ships can be seen invading Earth. Huge explosions burst across the continents. A new mission objective hits the screen: Stop the destruction of the human race and Master Chief opens the hangar door and jumps into space, heading directly for a hovering Covenant craft below. The trailer showcased new graphic enhancements that Bungie's managed to get out of Xbox, including realistic real-time lighting effects, more fluid animation and more realistic bump mapping. In addition to featuring online play through Xbox Live, the sequel will offer a larger assortment of weapons and twice as many vehicles.

The story also covers the Xbox Live announcement.

It's strange that we have to wait 21 days for the Halo 2 trailer, but Smilebit thinks he knows why. He writes in the HBO forum:

The Halo trailer is encoded using WMP9. The Windows Media Player 9 beta comes out on Sept. 4th.

So IS Windows Media Player 9 coming out September 4? You betcha. My main concern is, will a Mac version be released by that time?

Crap. Don't count on seeing the Halo 2 trailer any time in the near future. There is a counter at Xbox.com that says it will be released 21 days from now. That would be September 4, 2002.

We've started a Halo 2 Screenshot section and added the first seven shots from the upcoming trailer as released on Bungie.net.

Louis Wu over at HBO has posted a link to Team Overkill's page on their experiences on the first day of the Halo National Tournament.

Gamers.com, a site which has pages on Halo and Halo 2 as well as Bungie Soft... uh, Studios, featuring various pieces of information, has also put up a transcript of the Halo 2 trailer unveiled last week. One of the more interesting bits is this bit of text, which apparently appears on the screen:

Objective -- Save the Earth from alien invasion
Mission: In progress

... just before the MC leaps out an airlock high above the Earth only to land on a passing Covenant ship.

Now, lots of people have interpreted this to mean Halo 2 takes place on Earth, and while that's certainly possible, I'd say it's decidedly less interesting. Here's hoping the Chief hitches a ride on that cruiser out to the Covenant homeworld instead to fulfill his original mission.

According to a news item at Bungie.net, the page that EB was hosting for the Halo National Tournament rules has disappeared inexplicably . There is a complete copy of the HNC rules online at iGames.

The good folks at GameFAQs have opened up a message board dedicated to Halo 2 in addition to their Halo and Halo Online boards. It's always nice to have more resources available, so this gets our approval.

HBO is back, and in one of the first news posts of the day Louis Wu drops an interesting tidbit:

Hopefully, DNS will propagate fast enough that by the time the Halo 2 trailer is released, folks can find us.

If one were so inclined, one might be led to believe that means that shortly after the time it usually takes for a DNS record to update-- usually 2-3 days, tops-- the trailer will be out.

Of course, given Rampancy's track record with DNS records, maybe it means the trailer will be out just before the game hits the store shelves. Time will tell.

A site called XboxGamers recently advertised that it was looking for questions to submit to the Halo 2 development team for an upcoming exclusive interview . As it turns out, this was more a result of an overly charitable response to a bit of spam in Matt Soell's mailbox. Get the lowdown in his HBO post on the subject. Thanks for the heads-up to HBO.

HBO pointed out a section on The Psyjnir Complex called Tabloids. There's an interesting series of items running there purporting to be insider reports from a Bungie informant called Shallow Throat. The crux of it seems to be the plans for a total of six.. no, make that seven... (or was it nine, originally?) Halo games. Check it out.