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.

Yes, the inevitable has finally happened.

No, not the release of Halo on the Mac and PC, although that will still happen.

We mean the announcement of Halo 2. The official word from Bungie is at Bungie.net (where else?) where the main man, Matt, lays down the sequel smackage. (Turns out, rumors of the announcement to be held in New York were true, despite the comments of a few Doubting Louises (Louii?) The announcement was also accompanied by new Halo 2 desktops and Halo 2 screenshots.

HBO got the drop on it last week when the announcement was first made, pointing out the Bungie.net announcement above as well as a Halo 2 press release at TeamXbox that included this very special quote from Jason Jones:

Halo 2 surpasses its predecessor in graphical beauty and combat intensity. 'Halo 2' is a lot like 'Halo', only it's 'Halo' on fire, going 130 miles per hour through a hospital zone, being chased by helicopters and ninjas, explained Jason Jones, the head of Bungie Studios, and the ninjas are all on fire, too.

HBO used the same quote, but we think that one is pretty irresistible.

Xbox.com has all that, a bag of chips, and two cents from Jaime Case Griesemer on what we can expect from Halo 2:

I don't want to ruin the surprise, but imagine the essential 'Halo' single-player experience: pitched battles between the humans and the Covenant, massive vehicle and infantry engagements. Now imagine that every combatant is an actual person playing over Xbox Live!

Griesemer is listed as the Lead Designer on Halo 2, but it sounds from those two quotes like both he and Jones are looking to change gears and go into marketing.

And if you're interested in getting the corporate line straight from the appropriate animal's orifice, there's a PRNewswire item on Halo 2 and PGR2 from Microsoft tailor made to fulfill that particular need.