Achronos notes that although the Bungie.net reboot is done, the Halo 3 sections will remain offline until this weekend.

Part Three of Ferrex's trilogy on Forge is up at Bungie.net: Advanced Forge Editing. It covers how to edit objects in ways specific to creating certain goal-oriented gametypes, instead of just piles of fusion cores.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

What this article does talk about a lot is spawning: spawn points and spawn zones. If you've always been interested in how Halo chooses to spawn you where it does, this article is a treasure trove.

Tyson "Ferrex" Green dishes details on the Construct multiplayer level over at GameSpot. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO.

That note about "significant changes to the Banshee" around the time of the public beta sure is interesting...

Luke Smith posted at NeoGAF that there will be plenty more information about Halo 3 released by Bungie every day before the game launches, including info on Forge, a Halo 3 humpday, and an unnamed "surprise".

This looks like a legitimate, if somewhat low quality, recording of Halo 3's opening cinematic, explaining the Chief's arrival on Earth. It also appears to confirm the contents of the game story summary posted elsewhere on the Internet.

Again-- if you don't want to be spoiled, don't view!

Okay, so the 360 isn't setting sales records in Japan, and the Japanese aren't really known worldwide for their love of the Halo franchise. Still, that didn't stop flagship Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu from ranking the game quite highly. One scorer gave it 10/10. The others? 9/10. Not bad. PlayTM has the story.

A Kotaku reader snapped some photos of Halo 3 boxes arriving at some game store. Not long to wait now!

Halo fan Mike McDermott created a 3d paper Master Chief using a program called PePaKuRa. For more images, check his Deviant Art page. Story from Kotaku.

Bungie.net will reboot tomorrow with new features enabled. TeamXbox has an interview with Bungie.net's development lead, Chris Gossett, about the new features.

Tyson "Ferrex" Green has written up the first part of a three-part series on working in Forge, Halo 3's in-game editor. You'll apparently be able to call on a startling variety of objects in the editor; although you won't be able to change map geometry, you'll be able to add objects so large that they will, effectively, change the flow of the map.

And, of course, it's not just editing, it's also a play mode:

Russ Pitts at the escapist has never preordered a game-- until Halo 3, that is.

Gamesindustry.biz reports that Microsoft is expecting to sell out of the Legendary edition of Halo 3, in the US at least.