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.

AKQA, the company responsible for last year's award-winning IRIS ARG promoting Halo 3, has put up an extensive presentation that summarizes and details each step of the game.

In episode 4, the summary reads in part:

The fourth episode continued to provide hints at the previously unknown Halo backstory, including the shocking reveal that Humans and Forerunners share an ancient biological connection.

So, is that it? Are humans and forerunners somehow related? Are Humans surviving Forerunner, left behind somehow when the latter moved out into space? Is Earth a lost Forerunner homeworld? Do they merely share a common lost ancestor-- the Precursors, perhaps? Were both species, Human and Forerunner, seeded by some other, unknown source? Is this official backstory given to AKQA by Bungie, or something they came up with themselves?

The questionable claim that "Halo 3 changed game development" made in this article over at GameGuide spurred OldNick into posting action again. What OldNick does think Bungie has a chance to teach the industry is how to coordinate large development teams-- a trend that seems destined to continue as development budgets soar ever higher.

MrAlexZander pointed out in the HBO forum an article entitled How Halo 3 Changed Game Development over at Game Career Guide, a site I hadn't heard of until now. Sure, Halo 3 was big, expensive, successful and popular, but did it actually change game development? Or is it just the latest and greatest example of the game industry following in the steps of Hollywood, depending on a decreasing number of hits powered by ever increasing budgets? Read the article and think about it.

OldNick is at it again. His latest blog entry is about Bungie's controversial story addition to Halo 2, the playable Arbiter-- and how his omission from Halo 3 may have been a crowd-pleasing move that left the game with a less rich story.

Ahead of NPD data, Microsoft is claiming that Halo 3 has sold over 8 million copies so far worldwide, and the 360 console 17.7 million, according to GameDaily.