Frankie and Sketch just got back to Bungie from E3, and when they did so, Frankie posted a new story at Bungie.net covering the background behind the demonstration and hinting that behind closed doors, some journalists got a look at a little bit more of it to prove that it was, in fact, realtime.

There wasn't much to show at the moment, since we're keeping things under warps for now, but CJ clued everyone in on the 3-mile wide Forerunner artifact, Cortana's state of mind and the Chief (no it's not Linda, or Kelly...) battered Mjolnir armor.

Marcus showed off the new engine's lighting system, the self-shadowing and realtime reflection on the Chief, and the fact that we can draw geometry out to about 13 or 14 (game) miles. There was other stuff, but we'll talk about that later.

For all the details check out We're Back over at Bungie.net.