Since real Bungie fans don't trust a word that is said about the Halo franchise, or indeed any Bungie game, unless it comes straight from Bungie, KP has now posted at Bungie.net to give the official imprimatur to the heretofore scurrilous rumors spread in Spain by Peter Moore and Peter Jackson.
To wit:
The latter is being referred to as a "new chapter" in the Halo series; no doubt this prevents any conflict with the idea that Halo 3 will be the "end" of the Halo story, as it will only end that particular story arc. Where or when these new games take place isn't yet known.
In addition to the projects mentioned above, Wingnut is also working on original intellectual property.
Peter Jackson has just been on stage with Peter Moore to announce the formation of Wingnut Interactive.
I really believe that there is a new form of entertainment that is not a film and is not a game. I am not a game designer. But what I am really interested in is in the idea of taking games and stories that could be films, but might not be films.
According to Jackson, the games this new studio will be working on are not going to be traditional games, but new "blends" of entertainment with the emotional impact of a film and the interactivity of a game.
Moore says that Jackson is working with Microsoft beyond just the Halo movie, and "Bungie is working on content beyond Halo 3".
Moore closes the Wingnut Interactive segment with a bullet list, indentifying Wingnut with a new Halo series produced by Bungie and Wingnut, and a new, original property to be developed by Jackson and Fran Walsh.
Those of you who thought that behind the closure of the Halogen project, a three-year-long attempt to make an unofficial mod for Command & Conquer Generals, lay a more sinister purpose, your suspicions have been confirmed. Ensemble Studios, creators of Microsoft's real-time strategy series Age of Empires, has announced Halo Wars, a real-time strategy game set in the Halo universe. The game will be developed in collaboration with Bungie and released for the PC and the Xbox 360.
1Up is reporting that Peter Jackson and Microsoft are forming a new games studio, Wingnut Interactive. The announcement cites Jackson's involvement in Halo 3 and a future Microsoft title.
UPDATE: 1Up has added some details to this item, fleshing out Jackson's involvement. It no longer mentions Halo 3 specifically, but does say:
But perhaps more importantly, Microsoft revealed that Peter Jackson will co-write, co-design and co-produce a completely new and original chapter in the Halo universe in collaboration with Bungie Studios. He will also work future title based on an original property from Microsoft.
Getting at the live video stream provided by the UK Xbox site seems to be a bit problematic, so here is an akamai cache link:
mms://a1369.l2074835666.c20748.g.lm.akamaistream.net/D/1369/20748/v0001/reflector:48948?wmcache=0
Nothing Bungie or Halo related so far. As Louis Wu pointed out at HBO there is also a live blog of the event at 1UP:
Major Silva of the United Nations Space Command Defense Force (a Halo fansite) interviewed Claude "Louis Wu" Errera of HBO. Asked how there were enough hours in the day for him to keep up with all the news in the Halo universe, as well as delete forum spam, run a business, have a family, and sometimes even play Halo, he responded:
I bet you'll find you've got hours of unaccounted-for time. We all do. it's just a matter of how you use it. (I see people hanging out on IRC all the time, griping about how busy they are, how little free time they have - but THEY'RE ON IRC, GRIPING! If they were really that busy, they wouldn't even have time to fire up the irc client. And so on.)
Words from the wise. The discussion group for this article begins in #louiswu_interview in ten minutes.
Brannon Boren made good on his promise over the weekend, putting together a nice little retrospective on the thinking process that went into creating the parts of the Halo Bible that deal with artificial intelligences like Cortana.
Just about everything that he mentions is revealed, in one way or another, either through the games or the novels, so there are not any spoilers. However, it is interesting to see the choices that were made and the reasons for them.
Perhaps the most interesting bit is this footnote on the seven-year lifespan of AIs:
Many fans saw a connection between the seven year figure and Bungie's mythology regarding the number "7". In truth, it was an arbitrary choice on my part. I was unaware of Bungie's past games or stories at the time. Sorry.
Sorry, Boren, we just can't buy that :)
[image:38939 right hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] There's a lot of goodies in this week's Bungie Update. Not a whole lot of it pertains to Halo 3, except possibly the logo, but that at least is something.
What is special is the first-ever Bungie podcast. Go check out the update to download it if you haven't yet. I don't see it in the Podcast Directory in iTunes yet; but then again, perhaps that is by design. Of course, if Major Nelson can be in there, and even drop the the word "blogcast" eventually, why can't Bungie?
The rest of the update is about digital swag; concept images for a Halo mobile portal for your phone that include Halo statistics from Xbox Live as well as allow you to browse and purchase wallpapers and ringtones.
From the Bungie Update:
"over a period of several months and literally hundreds of files, we have the final Halo 3 logo. We hope you like it and if everything goes according to plan, you’ll see a LOT more of this in the months ahead!
Looks like the color and texture of metal on the underside of the Halo rings; although at a distance, the colors also look like an Earth-like world seen from a distance, the mix of blue, green, and white.
Dean Takahashi caught up with Hamilton Chu of Giant Bite to talk about life after Halo. Chu spent three and a half years working on Halo; before that, he was part of the Oni team.
Now, he and Bungie alum Michael Evans are cofounders of Giant Bite, which is working on a project but is mum so far on the details. What he would mention, though, is what he took from the work on Halo and how he wants ot to apply at Giant Bite:
"It's hard to describe why players enjoy Halo," he said. "All these things work together and the core mechanics just feel so good. The stuff we did with the controls. The art design made you feel the right way. It all works together."
"All of us want to bring the great things we learned from past experiences," he said. "We want to build the quality and the team and the culture. Building it ourselves is intriguing and rewarding for us. The experience of building Halo and the impact it had on players. That was fun and we want to build event-type products again. We want to build something that will have an impact."
Game-Spectrum, purporting to cover the entire spectrum of gaming, gets a nice interview, along with threats of physical violence, with its interview of Bungie's own Kevin "KP" Paul, covering his turn-ons, turn-offs, and how he sleeps at night knowing all that stuff about Halo that we'll never even know we don't know.
According to Frankie in Bungie's latest Weekly Update, the artificial intelligence in current builds of Halo 3 seems to be quite a step up from the previous games.
The progression of talent in Bungie's AI drivers is well-documented; marines, for instance, could only handle Ghosts in Halo 1, often with disastrous results. Vehicles were thrown open to all kinds of units in Halo 2, as marines would drive Warthogs and Scorpions if given the chance, Grunts would take turns in Ghosts if opportunity arose. Having a passenger (preferably with a sniper weapon or a rocket launcher) as well as someone manning the chaingun in the Hog really gave the vehicle quite a presence.
Gunners in Halo 2 were often not quite as effective as they might have been. There was no real way to control what they were firing at, except to get closer to the intended target. Often they'd ignore clearly visible enemies because they were "out of range"-- even though the weapon itself would have been quite effective.
And Frankie says that's getting better in Halo 3:
In previous Halo games, the gunners were smart and would pick off targets in a logical fashion, but this time around, and it could be my imagination, the gunners are more precise and easier to influence. You can target individual bad guys by steering the Hog and even “convince” your gunner to pick a more relevant target and have him stop trying to blast a lone grunt hiding behind a rock when a bigger menace approaches.
[snip]
The AI still has ages of tuning left to go, and the bad news is that if your AI gunner is too good, he’ll be dumbed-down to make the game more balanced. That said, the scale and ferocity of the current encounters (read: more bad guys than ever before) mean that you were going to need more capable AI anyway.
Jordan117 has put up a nice bit of analysis in the HBO forum alleging that various artistic and design choices in Halo 2, specifically those made in the Outskirts and Metropolis levels, indicate that Bungie is postulating increasing global warming in Earth's future.
While probably not essential to the plot, if it's true it does demonstrate the insane attention to detail that Bungie puts into its games.
Thanks Louis Wu for the heads-up at HBO.
KP's latest piece at Bungie.net is for all the fans who wish they could work at Bungie like he does. It's probably fair to say that Bungie has hired more than its share of its own fans over the years, so while it's certainly a long shot, it isn't impossible, if you've got education, determination, and skills Bungie needs. Check out the article for tips from other Bungie staffers on how to get in the door, how to get noticed, and how to get hired to work at Bungie.