Frankie and Sketch just got back to Bungie from E3, and when they did so, Frankie posted a new story at Bungie.net covering the background behind the demonstration and hinting that behind closed doors, some journalists got a look at a little bit more of it to prove that it was, in fact, realtime.

There wasn't much to show at the moment, since we're keeping things under warps for now, but CJ clued everyone in on the 3-mile wide Forerunner artifact, Cortana's state of mind and the Chief (no it's not Linda, or Kelly...) battered Mjolnir armor.

Marcus showed off the new engine's lighting system, the self-shadowing and realtime reflection on the Chief, and the fact that we can draw geometry out to about 13 or 14 (game) miles. There was other stuff, but we'll talk about that later.

For all the details check out We're Back over at Bungie.net.

Douglass C. Perry at IGN has posted a blow by blow description of the Halo 3 trailer. It's awkwardly worded at points-- the reference to "two remaining Spartan soldiers" has some fans scratching their heads, but I think it's just an oblique reference to Kelly, who obviously does not appear in the trailer, and the Master Chief, who does. They also seem to have flubbed transcribing Cortana's lines or else fed them through Babelfish backwards and forwards, which they suggest are "I am your god, your feeling, your source".

What the article does have right are some nice quotes from Bungie's own CJ Cowan and Marty O'Donnell about the images in the trailer and what Bungie was trying to do:

Given the variety of character and story arcs at the end of Halo 2, we wanted to boil down our announcement to a few key threads. Cortana and the Chief being a galaxy apart is a situation we haven't seen before, and is something that is a powerful component to Halo 3. We are using her transmissions in the demo to give the viewer a few subtle clues to her situation and state of mind, without revealing any specifics we want to save for the game itself.

The Cortana reveal is the first evidence that this trailer might be for Halo 3, but the game's main protagonist is the item that seals that deal. It is the Chief, back on a devastated and Covenant controlled Earth, standing over the excavation of a structure buried in the crust of our own planet that is the meat of our demo.

Some of what Marty had to say was echoed in the short interview with Major Nelson, but he also added the following:

I want them to be left with that, 'I can hardly wait to play this game' feeling by the end with a slight, 'I wonder what she meant by that' aftertaste.'

I'd say, mission accomplished.

In addition to the annotated version of Bungie.net's own Halo 3 FAQ, posted at the same time as the announcement release and the trailer, we've now started a separate Rampancy.net Halo 3 FAQ. If you have a question to suggest, please add a comment! Both FAQs are on the Halo 3 Articles page.

CVG has a recap of some of Microsoft's E3 goings-on, focusing primarily on the advantage that Shane Kim believes Xbox Live gives to the 360, as compared to Sony's upcoming PlayStation 3.

Of course, some recently announced games also got mentioned:

"Hopefully we've put to bed any concerns or confusion about what Bungie is doing with the Halo universe. They're very focused on Halo 3 and they're going to make it bigger and better and everything everyone expects."

Of course, Kim doesn't say there won't be Halo spinoffs, just that they aren't what Bungie is working on right now.

Louis Wu at HBO pointed out a short video interview that Xbox Live's Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb did, presumably for his unofficial Xbox blog, MajorNelson.com.

Xbox.com has an .asx version; Rampancy is mirroring the Sorenson 3-encoded QuickTime version from HBO as well as hosting a DivX 5 encoded version. Both are now on our new Halo 3 Movies page.

We've also put together a quick and dirty transcript of the interview for those who don't want to bother with the (admittedly short) download; it's on our new Halo 3 Articles page.

We've put up a second copy of the Halo E3 2006 Announcement Trailer; this one weighs in at a much lighter 25 megabytes and is encoded in DivX 5, suitable for Macs or PCs, for those who don't like QuickTime or whose computers (like mine) have a bit of trouble keeping up with the high-resolution H.264 version.

Louis Wu at HBO has put up a summary of links to interesting forum threads; many of them touch on issues I mentioned in the Annotated FAQ, which also included a short analysis of the Announcement Trailer. And before everybody goes nuts, I had to go ahead and do that without checking any of the forums first because I was already behind by 12 hours, so no, I didn't steal anyone else's speculations or screenshots. It's just a predictable coincidence that simultaneously a few hundred people focused on the same few things: pilotless Banshees, hidden scrambled images in Cortana's transmissions, Gravemind's voice, and the modified Assault Rifle.

Finn at the Halo Story Page has also pulled out some items of note, focusing on the structure in the trailer, the Master Chief's posh new gloves, and the weather in New Mombassa.