Rampancy

Louis Wu at HBO correctly identified the subject of IGN's recent Stubbs interview as Tim Attuquayefio from Aspyr's Quality Assurance team, and also pointed out an interview with Wideload's Matt Soell at CVG. (Hey Matt, email us when these things go up; we love the Wu as much as any sane human being can and as platonically as possible, but that doesn't mean we want his name credited on every story, even the ones that aren't about Halo--Ed.)

Following closely on the heels of yesterday's prognostications in Variety about the Halo motion picture project, none other than Bungie's own scriptwriter extraordinaire, Joe Staten, penned part of a piece to try and calm the nerves of Halo fans everywhere, and give them every possible assurance that Bungie is engaged and enthusiastic about this project-- about Alex Garland's script and about the attitude of producer Peter Schlessel.

Bungie's Community Team, along with Microsoft, has produced for the project an expanded version of the Halo Bible (of which the page on Grunts can be seen in Joe's story).

I'll mark the words of HBO's Louis Wu on this one: don't give up being skeptical, but if it is at all possible to make fans cautiously optimistic about the film's prospects, this article will do it.

Spotted by HBO, an article by Variety says Halo is hitting the big screen in 2007, and while Microsoft (and thus, we assume, Bungie) will be "guaranteed extensive consultation on the project" it will not have final approval on anything. (If rumors about the Doom movie pan out, get ready for a film version of Halo that doesn't take place on a Ringworld, where the Covenant aren't religious fanatics, and where you get to see the Master Chief's face. Here's hoping not--Ed.)

There's a freely available streaming video interview with Tim of Wideload Games over at GameSpot. (Sorry no last name-- the screen size of the free streaming video is so small I can't accurately transcribe it, so I won't try.) He explains the basic gameplay mechanics, as seen elsewhere-- the unholy flatulence, the gut grenade, the brain-eating, and the hand-- and also the use of Stubbs' head as a kind of deadly gaseous bowling ball.

The interview says that the Xbox version should be out in time for Halloween with the PC and Mac versions to follow about a month afterwards.

UPDATE: GameSpot has also posted an updated Stubbs preview with information from a recent hands-on session. It mentions several new features, including a Halo-style two-player cooperative mode.

(I think the underlying concept of Stubbs is valid-- being the Flood is more fun than fighting them--Ed.)

UPDATE: Tim is actually from Aspyr, the publisher of Stubbs, and not from Wideload as stated above. Thanks to Matt I believe, who didn't login, or someone else who doesn't hold a grudge against Tim.