[image:8472 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]A new set of 12 screenshots have shown up in the Celebrities section of MSN, spotted by M3XGhost39 who alerted Louis Wu at HBO. Some are old, some are new, some aren't supposed to be out yet, apparently, and some might be spoilers if you knew what you were looking at.

About five of the twelve are multiplayer (one, two, three, four, five) it seems the rest are single player (six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve) although in many cases they are cropped so tightly you can't see much of the level they are in.

We've added them to our Halo 2 Gallery.

GameSpy is starting a week of pre-launch coverage for Halo 2, and the first item is an 8-page interview with Frankie. Interestingly, at the end Frankie denies that anyone at Bungie has specifically said their next game (or games) will or will not be related to Halo, despite what Parsons said elsewhere about doing something "different". Curious... Thanks Louis Wu at HBO. More coverage from GameSpy will be coming.

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.

IGN's latest Countdown To Halo 2 feature is actually a preview not of Halo 2 itself, but a preview of their review of the game. There's a special kind of insanity inherent to the buzz, however justifiable, behind this title. One can only wonder what it would be like if, say, the installed base numbers of the Xbox and the PlayStation 2 were reversed.

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.

To keep up with the information coming out about Wideload's just-announced title, Stubbs the Zombie in 'Rebel without a Pulse', we've created a few easy links.

• For all the items about Wideload Games: http://rampancy.net/wideload
• For all the items about Stubs the Zombie game: http://rampancy.net/stubbs
• Image gallery for Wideload Games: http://rampancy.net/image/tid/114
• Image gallery for Stubbs: http://rampancy.net/image/tid/146

Wideload and Aspyr today revealed their upcoming Mac, PC and Xbox title, due for release in the summer of 2005. It's a third-person action game titled Stubbs The Zombie in "Rebel Without A Pulse". The full press release is on Aspyr's site and will soon be archived here. As yet there is no additional material on the Wideload site.

So far, it seems as if the game will feature:

• brain-eating
• human possession
• explosive body parts

Here's what Alexander "The Man" Seropian had to say:

To us nothing has the sweet smell of success like rotting Zombie flesh," said Alexander Seropian, President of Wideload Games. "We fell in love with the Stubbs game concept because of the unique player experience and the potential of the main character. We are really enjoying bringing this concept to life... or un-death, as the case may be.

Wideload Games was founded in 2003 by ex-Bungie founder, and employs several other ex-Bungie employees.

UPDATE: We've archived the press release.

UPDATE: GameSpot has an exclusive video interview with Seropian, available streaming for all or as a download only for Complete members.

Tyson "Ferrex" Green pointed out a post by SiRRis in the TeamXbox forums. It shows boxes of Halo 2, having arrived in some stores already, cleary marked "Do not sell before 11/09/04". Apparently the charge for breaking this rule is equivalent to manslaughter. Just kidding.

AEG sends word that a documentary entitled Making the Video Game: Halo 2 will air on MTV on Friday, November 5 at 11 PM ET/PT, giving a behind-the-scenes look at the games, and involving the bands Hoobastank and Incubus, who are contributing to the soundtrack album, also due out with the game on November 9.

The new Halo 2 commercial that was leaked awhile back has now been broadcast in North America, and several versions of it have hit the Internet. Mythica is hosting an MPEG, BSP is mirroring it, a QuickTime, and a DivX. Thanks Count Zero and Louis Wu at HBO.

UPDATE: There's a new version available on several sites now, recorded from satellite feed by ZiplocBodybag and mpeg2 encoded by CYBRFRK and sized for the web by Blackstar. It's being hosted at Boomerica, HaloArt, and Blackstar Productions. The earlier version mirrored at BSP and mentioned above has been replaced by this version.

IGN's Gear site has reviewed Lik-Sang's SmartJoy Frag, an adapter that lets you use standard PS/2 mice and keyboards with Xbox games. Here's what they had to say about using it to play Halo:

Halo just works damn fine with the SmartJoy FRAG. Movement is as smooth as butter and being able to spin around or look anywhere quickly is a godsend. Our only complaint with this is that the vertical movement is slower than the horizontal, but that's not too big a deal. Hopefully Halo 2 has options for both.

Editor's Note: Not sure why, with the Xbox's input being based on USB, Lik-Sang has chosen to use PS/2 ports instead. It means that you'll need to use USB to PS/2 adapters if you have a USB keyboard or mouse. Also, be aware: although IGN speculates the device should work with Halo 2 as well, there's no solid evidence of this, and it's entirely possible that Bungie may have made, or may make, changes to Halo 2's input code to negate any advantage that the SmartJoy Frag might give to keyboard and mouse players.