You may have read somewhere else already that press reviews of Halo 3 (much like Halo 2 before it) are handled in a somewhat different way than other games. Bungie doesn't mail out review copies to journalists in advance; if they did, it's possible the game's ending would have been spoiled by now. GamePro has an article up that details this alternative procedure.

This week's Bungie Weekly Update-- only two more to go now before the game's out-- is supposedly the biggest ever, at least in terms of kilobytes. Most of the content consists of pictures of Kotubukiya Halo 3 statues and McFarlane Halo 3 figures. The last image is interesting, though, as it seems to show the upcoming revisions to Bungie.net, including the windowed screenshot and recent games interfaces.

Japanese publication PingMag interviews Bungie's environmental artist Ken Taya on the cultural influences on design jobs here and in Japan:

Well in terms of semantics the actual word designer and the roles associated with this position differ. Here comes an over generalisation: I feel that the Japanese game developers really focus on the feel of the game above everything else - and the US developers, the look.