b>John "JCal" Callaham of HomeLAN Fed has done an interview with Wideload Games founder Alexander "The Man" Seropian about Stubbs the Zombie in "Rebel Without a Pulse". Someone finally asked one of the minds behind Bungie one of the age-old burning questions: Why zombies?

There's a primal terror of dead things, even when they're not doing anything. When dead things crawl out of their graves and start gobbling the flesh of the living, you have to consider the possibility that everything you thought you knew is worthless.

For us, part of the appeal was doing something new with a somewhat moribund genre. Part of the reason zombies are popular adversaries is that they're easy to do as long as you adhere to the mythology: they're slow, they're dumb, they only attack by biting, etc. We kept the basic idea of a brain-eating dead guy, but chose to not restrict ourselves based on what other games had done. That made it a lot more interesting.

While admitting that nice people don't go around eating brains, Seropian insists that Stubbs is a character that players will identify with as they understand the motives for his actions.

And, of course, in typical Bungie fashion, Seropian gave a detailed breakdown of how the game is moving toward completion:

Going by the industry-standard completeness scale, which ranges from sandwich to desk lamp, I give Stubbs the Zombie a rating of lizard. It will be released Summer 2005.

Hey Matt-- when do the Weekly Wideload Updates start?