While I don't think there's enough actual content in the Halo Wars trailer to do a full-on annotation, as for the Halo 3 trailer, I did think it worthwhile to try and collect some thoughts about yesterday's announcements that will be worth pondering in the time between now and when we actually see these new games. Some are picayune details, and some are big questions. First, the picayune details.
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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:
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.
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:
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:
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.
[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.
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.
Bungie announced that Halo 3 is in development for the Xbox 360 and is expected to be released in 2007. The announcement was made at Grauman's Chinese Theater, in Hollywood, CA.
Other than "it takes place in the Halo universe" not much more is revealed about the game.
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.
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.
