Frankie's latest Weekly What's Update at Bungie.net makes up for in important details what it lacks in epic scope.
Namely, it mentions the over fifty thousand XBL accounts permanently banned, the over $175,000 raised for Katrina relief efforts by the Fight the Flood campaign, and how a seven-foot tall female Spartan killing machine looks without a gun.
Frankie's written a Bungie.net primer on the new Team Hardcore playlist, arranged with the input of Major League Gaming. To help Frankie stay alive more than two ten seconds in Team Hardcore, he enlisted the help of MLG's own director of communications, Dolbex.
Bungie's own Mat Noguchi has a new assistant, recent DigiPen graduate Bob Glessner. (Let's call him Microsoft Bob for now, because that's the cruelest thing I can think of at the moment--Ed.) The interview with Bob shows what it's like to be hired (and fired) by Mat, usually several times a day. Thanks Frankie, whom one could almost believe wrote both the questions and the answers in this interview.
Bungie has killed the Halo 2 leaderboards to discourage cheaters, as well as added the Team Hardcore playlist. Thanks SketchFactor.
What's interesting in Sketch's post is the admission that the top-ranked Halo 2 players online are cheaters:
We sincerely apologize to the few players out there who have played hundreds of legitimate games to work your way up the leaderboards. You will still keep your rankings and your stats as a token of your l337 skillz. Unfortunately the reality is that the vast majority of people who do appear on the leaderboards have only got there through some form of cheating.
To be honest, I wonder how effective this change will be. With so few players appearing on the leaderboards, even most cheaters must have known they wouldn't make it, and so were doing it just to gain a high rank. Since ranks are still in, there's still that much incentive to cheat; just not incentive to cheat so much more than the other cheaters that you get a leaderboard spot-- which was probably achieved through sheer volume of play.
So maybe there won't be fewer cheaters, but perhaps the worst cheaters will just play less often.
Bungie's Humpday Challenge is back after a long hiatus. The boys from Kirkland took on some random misfortunates in the new Team Snipers playlist and took two games out of three. The story is accompanied by the best animated GIF ever.
According to scans from Game Informer provided by Xbox365, the "mystery character" from the Haloverse set to appear in Team Ninja's DOA4 game for the Xbox 360 isn't the Master Chief-- but it is a Spartan; female Spartan-458, despite heavy (perhaps too heavy) hints that a curvaceous Cortana would get the nod.
A double dose of Weekly What's Update this week. SketchFactor got himself all primed to fill in for an ailing Frankie, and then Frankie used his dying breath to provide the real update. What a trooper. For all the verbiage, most of it is rehash of the week's events-- a Halo character to appear in DOA4 and the announcement of, in Frankie's words, Peter Freaking Jackson as the Executive Producer of the Halo film.
The only hint at anything new is "special props to Charlie (Gough), (Mat) Noguchi and the programming team who've been pulling monstrous hours on the creation of essential tools for our next project."
Frankie posted a very no-nonsense denial of the purported script for Halo 3 that we mentioned yesterday, calling it "either fake, or the fanfic of a dedicated Halo fan being passed off as real."
Sometimes the rumor mill gets it right-- or at least nearly so. Previous rumors about Peter Jackson, director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the upcoming King Kong, taking the helm of the Halo film have turned out to be almost correct. He is on board, as Joe Staten's post at Bungie.net now confirms, but as Executive Producer rather than director.
According to Joe, that also means that Jackson's WETA Workshop, responsible for making the weapons, armor, and costumes for the Tolkien trilogy, will be doing the same for the Halo film.
In other Halo movie-related news, artist Lorraine "Mehve" McLees has posted an article detailing her involvement in the production of the Halo Movie Companion, a compendious document prepared by Bungie and Kick Design to assist those making the film.
Bungie.net is now confirming the Game Informer story that GhaleonEB pointed out earlier in the HBO forum; that a character from the Halo universe will make an appearance in DOA4. Neither developer is stating which one, as of yet, although the Bungie.net story has an impressive display of Cortana's own unnatural formations, which is either a blatant hint or a huge red herring.
The Weekly What's Update at Bungie.net this week, courtesy of Frankie, talks about the upcoming Team Hardcore playlist for serious, competetive players, including 10 maps and 10-11 gametypes. Check the update for a more complete list. Frankie also says that yes, Bungie knows that people still cheat, and they are still working on it.
As for surprise announcements:
Oh. Keep your eyes peeled next week for a surprising, cool, awesome Bungie-related announcement. No it is not Halo 3, nor is it the surprise revelation of our next project (whatever that may be) but it’s sweet. It’s something I’ve hinted at in the past. And you’ll probably like it. More than that I can’t say. Which even I know is aggravating. But it ain’t up to me. So just be patient.
This week's Update by Frankie at Bungie.net has a nice panorama of the new Kirkland office, where all the TVs are HD, the projectors are Godzilla, the subwoofers are behemoth, and Don Parsons thinks the elevator is a sauna. (Let's hope he doesn't decide to bring sushi with him--Ed.)
Frankie's second report from the Tokyo Game Show has Kameo and cosplayers, Koei and yaoi (sort of), Chrome Hounds and Dynasty Warriors, five Resident Evils and Ninety-Nine Nights. Not to mention a list of things you can't put in a locker in Japan, which makes me wonder what Frankie is doing over there in his free time.
Halo gets mentioned once, sort of.
Bungie's Frankie has created his own Bungie.net Group, the Legion of Jerks, for "evil-smelling ruffians" who like "Pie and Margaritas". (Not sure who Pie is, but hopefully they'll have some nice-looking Margaritas--Ed.)
Hopefully at some point there will be some information there, like, how to join, or a Halo 3 announcement, or something.
Frankie filed the Weekly What's Update this week from the floor of the Tokyo Game Show, after getting blitzed on martinis. Wait, that's not right.
Frankie was there just to catch up on other Microsoft games and stuff he likes-- he mentions Phantagram's Ninety Nine Nights (as a lot of people are doing this week)
In Bungie-related news, the move to Kirkland is complete and Bungie held their Summer Pentathlon-- those events will get written up (hopefully) in next week's Update.
For those hoping that there would be a Bungie announcement soon, Frankie has this to say:
A few folks asked me if I was there to unveil Halo 3. I smiled and told them the usual Bungie line. We haven't announced our new project yet, blah, blah, blah. We may not have announced it, but its coming along nicely.
The update concludes with a photo gallery.