1UP has an interview with Tyson "Ferrex" Green about Halo 2, including his involvement in The Library level from the original game, and the tongue-in-cheek homage to it in Halo 2:
The Library was actually the first mission I was put on when I came here. But the thing that keeps me sane at night is that the library was mostly designed when I got here, so I don't blame myself for that.
Nothing directly Halo-related here, but there's an interesting interview at GamingGroove with Tim Sweeney of Epic Games. One of the topics mentioned was the balance between art creation and programming in games, and how emphasis is switching from the latter to the former:
The Junkyard has another spotlight for the Halo community today; they got in touch with Ducain from HighImpactHalo and he was kind enough to sit down and answer their questions. Thanks Ryan "Mhaddy" Matthews.
If you've reached thirty you can try like hell for renewal on Carousel or you can join the GeezerGamers, a group of plus-thirty folks who like to play games against each other for fun. Bungie.net has an interview with the group's founder, Microsoft employee Jamey Tisdale.
[image:8865 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Andreas "BOLL" Aronsson of Wheels on Fire and flashy gruntness (grunty flashness?) fame is the subject of the latest Spotlight at The Junkyard by Ryan "Mhaddy" Matthews. BOLL hits the nail right on the head when he says:
On a side note, the world needs more co-op games.
How right he is.
[image:8779 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] I've written up a short account with photos of my recent trip to London-- or, rather, the side trip to have a few beers with Stuntmutt, author/artist of the Halo comic One One Se7en.
XBox Live Next has interviewed Wideload Games CEO and founder Alexander "The Man" Seropian. Looks like the interview occurred before Stubbs the Zombie was announced, though, so there's not much information there.
The BBC wonders why Halo 1 has created so much enthusiasm for the sequel; and to find out, they asked HBO's Claude "Louis Wu" Errera:
Bungie got everything right. They were really careful to make sure everything worked the way it was supposed to.
Nothing distracts you when you were playing. There was nothing in Halo that had not been done before but everything in there was as good as it could be.
GameSpy's prelaunch coverage continues with an interview with Tyson "Ferrex" Green about level design and why Halo 2 won't include repetetive levels like Halo 1 did.
b>John "JCal" Callaham of HomeLAN Fed has done an interview with Wideload Games founder Alexander "The Man" Seropian about Stubbs the Zombie in "Rebel Without a Pulse". Someone finally asked one of the minds behind Bungie one of the age-old burning questions: Why zombies?
The latest in GameSpy's series of interviews with Bungie is with Marty "The Elder" O'Donnell, about the sounds and music in Halo 2. Marty always gets asked a lot about music, but this article also talks a bit about the game's sound effects:
Hitting a cabbage with a metal pipe works wonders. Also this time we have doubled the sampling rate, and have stereo/surround sound files that are crisp, juicy and crunchy. Plus, we killed a lot of grunts while recording.
Continuing their pre-launch coverage, GameSpy has interviewed Joe "Deckard" Staten of Bungie about his CIA career, film school.. and oh yeah, Halo 2.
You all asked for it-- you sent questions to Mat "Shunji" Noguchi, Bungie Tools Programmer. And now you get what you deserve-- his answers.
Our favorite answer? Well, it's a tie between:
What the hell is I LOVE BEES?
and
[Shishka's] like a cross between Tron and the Lawnmower Man.
xblgames has interviewed Bungie's "sorta" #1 fan, Miguel "Freewill" Chavez, talking about Bungie and the Bungie community's past, present and future. Thanks again HBO.
Two more interviews up: Bungie's Pete Parsons at HomeLAN Fed talks about Halo 2, and AKQA's Rikki Khanna talks about the Halo2.com website. Thanks once more, HBO.