Several sites, including current one-Wu-wonder HBO, pointed out an article on Halo 2 in Entertainment Weekly. Some of those sites also pointed out some things which, while not outright inaccuracies, certainly seem to skew their perception of the game through a film industry lens.

For instance, from reading this article you'd think Halo 2 was entirely Joe Staten's project-- there's no mention of any other staffer, and Staten is referred to as the "philosophical ringleader of Bungie Studios" (Editor's Note: We thought that was Jones' gig. So sue us. Without diminishing Staten's contribution to the project one bit, we do suspect other people were involved.)

However, there are still several revealing bits of information here.

But the biggest step forward is that Staten's story about an invasion of Earth is now told from the perspective of both the humans and the Covenant aliens.

We're not quite sure what that means, although it might be the reason why some new Covenant species, like Prophets, speak English-- so that parts of the game showing events from the Covenant perspective will be intelligible without resorting to subtitles.

Staten also admits to political, as well as religious, themes in the story:

"You could look at [the story] as a damning condemnation of the Bush administration's adventure in the Middle East."

In fact, the story also cites that Microsoft's legal team forced a change in one alien name due to "Muslim overtones".

The article also tries to place Halo within the context of religious beliefs, something hinted at in Halo 1, but never fully explained:

Since Master Chief was already well established, Staten and his father, a professor of theology, developed a set of religious beliefs that could explain the Covenant's actions in the sequel. They zeroed in on the idea of the Halos — 10,000-kilometer-wide ring worlds — as utopias, safe havens in a universe filled with terror.

Which makes one wonder exactly what it is about being crawling with hostile adaptive lifeforms like the Flood makes a piece of cosmic real estate into a Utopia. I guess there's no accounting for taste.

To top it all off, we get a hint of what might be next from Bungie:

To that end, he's busy at work on several projects, including the possible resurrection of Phoenix, a non-sci-fi project that Bungie spent two years on before putting it aside to finish Halo 2.

Quite a lot of revealing information, even if it is from a source that doesn't usually follow games; so take it with a few grains of salt.

A lot of new media has been released in the past day or so. Bungie.net's Halo 2 Videos page has WMP9 versions of the 30 and 60 second commercial spots, as well as TV ads in French, German, and Italian. There's also another bonus; an online version of the Multiplayer Featurette that's going to be on the Limited Edition DVD. HBO has QuickTime versions of some of these, availalable as BitTorrents. GameSpot also has the WMP9 versions as well, as streams or downloads.

The latest Bungie Weekly Update by Frankie, of course, which is in the Forum at Red vs Blue. Because their forum requires registration, HBO has put up a mirror of the update as well. While you're at Bungie.net, also check out the details for their Bungie Fan Fest on November 8 in Seattle, WA.

Mat "shunji" Noguchi, that is, Bungie curmudgeon. Frankie has offered him up sacrificially to answer questions on the Bungie.net forum (largely as a distraction from spoilers, no doubt). So far a lot of questions, and not many answers, although the thread is so long it might be hard to find Mat's answers if they are there; or perhaps his answers will be posted in a separate thread. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: On Friday the answers will be posted.

UPDATE: The answers will be posted... later.