Matt Soell has confirmed on the halo.bungie.org forum that Bungie's creating a new division to do the movies for their games.

Essentially, Joseph and Marty will be heading up a new team devoted to making cutscenes, trailers and the like (both in-engine and CGI) for Bungie titles.

This is cool because they get to work on them year-round as opposed to doing it all in the two weeks before E3. I'm expecting an increase in quality AND quantity.

The Marathon's Story Page informs us that Robert Mclees and Lorraine Reyes have become engaged. For those who don't know, Rob first rose to fame as a Marathon artist and author of the Nar Chronicles; Lorraine originally worked in Bungie's now-defunct marketing department but has stayed on post-buyout in a development capacity.

Congratulations to you both. See, you nobly sacrifice yourself with a grenade to keep a dozen Covenant soldiers from chasing your buddy, and the girls just swoon....

Old skule Halo website junkies will remember Halam, one of the original half dozen sites to see serious work done on them. However, Mojo has decided to lay that site to rest for good, but has started something new in it's place:

Miss Pallor's editorial summing up the fan reaction to the Bungie purchase and the period of doubt about Halo's development that followed has a number of important points that I thought were worth responding to.

Miss Pallor has written an editorial at the corporation site about all the recent developments in the Bungieverse over the past few weeks, with a particular slant towards the fan reactions. It's well worth a read, although sure to incense a certain segment of the community.

Here's an excerpt:

Kudos to Cannibal Harry, who has digitized and posted several movies from the MWNY Fanfest on his site. The high quality videos are for the Halo 'Wassup!' and nVidia commercial movies, as shot with his camcorder at the event, and come in high quality and high compression versions. Well worth the downloads, especially if you're looking for a chuckle. ;)

• Forum: Fanfest movies

We've already remarked on the amazing success of the NY FanFest this past Friday, but here are a few of my personal observations:

Firstly, a huge Action Sack o'kudos is owed to Miguel (Freewill) for organizing the whole thing, from getting the pizzas to arranging for the location (Neutral Ground on W. 122nd Street).

And it's done. With an astonishing turnout of over 150 people, the MWNY Bungie Fanfest was the most successful to date, which is all the more remarkable when one considers that Bungie wasn't even exhibiting this time around. Bungie Sightings and Marathon's Story will doubtless be updated soon with more great stuff from the gathering, but in the meantime, we've scored some swag of our own.