Couple of great behind-the-scenes articles pointed out over at HBO: Next Generation interviewed Marty "The Elder" O'Donnell about music in games in general and polishing the Halo series in specific, and Sci Fi Tech put up Faces of Halo that shows us some of the actors and actresses who lent their voice talents to the Halo series and points out other things you might ha
Once again more news has transpired in 24 hours than I'm able to handle with the individual loving care that each unique-as-in-snowflake bit of news fully deserves to be treated. So sue me.
Here's what happened:
Bungie cheated HBO out of a Humpday win. Makes you wish there was some large company comprised of adults watching over these boys Luke Smith while at play.
Since I've been spending way too much time playing Halo 3, a lot of news has slipped by the last couple days:
Kotaku notes a new Xbox 360 bundle that includes Halo 3, destined for Europe.
TTL says Halo 3 is blam!ing awesome.
Frankie does a good impression of Officer Barbrady while talking to Game Informer about the Microsoft-Bungie split:
GI: Are you at all surprised by the response to this?
1Up interviews Bungie's Brian "SketchFactor" Jarrard about the Bungie-Microsoft split. So far everyone who has spoken to the press is still on the same page; that this was a mutually beneficial deal, quickly and amicably agreed upon. Despite 1Up trying to press and find some conflict, no one will admit to any, even theoretical:
More updates on Bungie's amazing flight into freedom:
FiringSquad interviewed Frankie, but all they give you is a summary. It does say that Harold Ryan is now President of Bungie. He mentions a skunk works for new projects. Wonder if that's where Jason Jones is spending his time, given that his only credit in Halo 3 was under "special thanks".
Creativity Online interviews film director Neill Blomkamp about the promotional shorts he did for Halo 3, and in the process, finds out that the Halo movie project is a lot more dead than most fans think, and that the shorts were entirely separate, and not part of an attempt to lure Hollywood back into the project:
The Anennberg School for Communication at USC's Online Journalism Review interviews Claude "Louis Wu" Errera at HBO about what it's like to run an online community for a game like Halo, and why mainstream media outlets have been slow to pick up on trends in that area in the article Lord of the Ringworld.
Pro-G has delivered the promised longer interview with Bungie's Joe Tung and Lee Wilson.
GameGuru interviews Mohit Anand of Xbox India, who makes some pretty ludicrous sounding sales claims for Xbox 360:
GG: How is the Xbox 360 currently doing in India?
The Sydney Morning Herald has an article about Bungie AI programmer Damian Isla:
An article in Wired talks about Bungie's attention to detail when doing multiplayer and campaign level design:
A few more pre-launch interviews of Bungie folk out there:
Armchair Empire talked to environmental artist Mike Zak.
TeamXbox has the story of Montreal animation studio damnfx, tapped by Bungie to help produce some of the in-engine cinematics of Halo 3.
"Having recently worked on two large format stereoscopic films for IMAX theatres, it was refreshing to focus simply on delivering outstanding animation, while letting Bungie's Halo 3 game engine worry about lighting, rendering and compositing the shots!" said damnfx executive producer Peter Skovsbo.
Bungie's Jonty Barnes, talking to GameSpot at the Tokyo Game Show, mentioned that Bungie had to triple its server capacity to handle the increased load from Halo 3. Not sure whether that meant matchmaking, or community features, or what; but from the latest podcast it seems that stat-tracking will be vastly expanded, and Bungie is aiming to keep player career stats more or less completely and indefinitely.