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.

TeamXbox.com has a news story announcing that the Xbox Live online gaming service will launch on November 15, exactly one year after the launch of the Xbox and its premier title, Halo. Halo 2 will support Xbox Live, but it won't be out for another year. At launch, about 10 titles will support Xbox Live, including Unreal Championship, Ghost Recon and NFL 2003. To follow in 2003 will be Halo 2, CounterStrike and Star Wars: Galaxies.

The starter kit, including a year's subscription and a Xbox Communicator headset, will cost $49.95. Xbox Live only supports broadband connections (such as xDSL and cable modems). No word yet on which of the games will support which features (such as downloadable content).

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.

InsideMacGames is saying that the Official UK Xbox Magazine has reported that Halo 2 is in development and will be out for Christmas 2003. There is a quote in the IMG article, but it only mentions the Xbox General Manager -- not a name.

According to the article, there's still no solid release date on Mac/PC Halo. Mr Yun in the HBO forum provided the notice.

And now, for a few moments, we venture into the breach that straddles the realm of the official announcement and the territory of the unfounded rumor.

Louis Wu at HBO is reporting the rather specious claim forwarded to HBO by Greg that a site named GamePlay will take your preorder for Halo 2 right now-- despite their admission that there is no pricing information for the title. They've set their price at a shade under $45 pounds sterling-- that's about 70 or so Euros, or, for you Yanks out there, about $66.50. (Warning, this includes UK sales tax). They claim this should go down.

The UK retailer is claiming that Halo 2 was just officially announced at this year's E3.

But that seems like a bit of a stretch-- Bungie certainly never mentioned anything about Halo 2, nor did they show anything. But statements by Microsoft PR talked about an online enabled Halo title, and Bungie reps have repeatedly denied the existance of any Halo 1.5 title that would be online enabled.

That leaves any reasonable thinking person to conclude that:

1) There will not be an online-enabled version of Halo 1
2) There will be an online-enabled Halo game

This pretty much leaves open the only possible conclusion that:

3) There will be a sequel (or prequel) to Halo, for argument's sake called Halo 2 , that will have online play via Microsoft's Xbox Live service (as MS announced).

Now, Louis is warning us that Halo 2, as such, has not officially been announced-- but this seems a bit like splitting hairs. True, no positive statements regarding a Halo sequel have been made by Bungie personnel themselves. They've only told us what they won't be doing. But if we keep making these kinds of disctinctions we may reach a point where it's impossible to know anything about what Bungie is doing because of conflicts between statements made by Bungie and MS-- and to completely discount statements made by MS representatives really isn't a viable long-term strategy, given that at the moment they're the only one making statements about products and services that fall outside the immediate scope of what Bungie is doing-- things like Xbox Live, which Bungie games will most certainly support but which Bungie probably doesn't have authority or permission to comment on directly.

We're mirroring two of the four Making Of Halo videos that were recently posted at HBO; the one featuring Alex Seropian and Hamilton Chu, and the one featuring Steve Abeyta and Shikai Wang.