Master Chief, in search of Captain Keyes and his squad, is searching a mysterious installation under a swamp. He has come across a fallen marine and is viewing his camera record.
Mendoza: Why do we have to eat this old stuff, sarge? This cereal tastes like bits of newspaper, and this milk has been sitting on the radiator for about eighty years!
Sarge: Watch your mouth, son. That cereal is your history.
A discussion about how heavily the Halo franchise was being marketed of course led to a "Halo: The Breakfast Cereal" joke as per a similar mention in the Mel Brooks movie, Spaceballs.
That spurred a few lines of marketing-speak that could be used to promote a Halo cereal. Most of that can be seen here:
http://quotes.pfordee.com/index.php?quote=1564
Afterwards I thought it might be possible to rewrite every Halo and Halo 2 cutscene as a long serial advertisement for this cereal.
The Chief enters the control room. There is a holographic control panel with several cabinet doors beneath it.
Cortana: That cabinet, try there.
The Master Chief opens a cabinet, places Cortana inside. Munching noises can be heard.
Master Chief: Is the cereal there? Are you all right?
Cortana: Never been better! You can't imagine the wealth of nutrition. So many vitamins, so fast... it's glorious!
Master Chief: So, what kind of cereal is it?
The Chief and Cortana are sneaking into an underground structure, accompanied by a group of marines.
Marine Pilot (on radio): Mayday, mayday! Dropship Bravo 22 taking enemy fire! Ground teams, you got two enemy dropships coming in fast!
Marine: Dammit! Okay, people, we got company comin', let's set the table.
Cortana: Marines, hold off the Covenant here while the Chief and I activate the map. There, that holo panel. Press it.
The Master Chief presses the holo panel and a holographic map appears.
The Master Chief and a group of marines are deep inside a Covenant cruiser. A door opens, and they enter the cruiser's detention area.
Cortana: This looks like the ship's brig. The cereal signal is strong. And we might find the captain, too.
Marine (in holding cell): Chief! We're starving, let us out, man!
Captain Keyes: (in adjacent holding cell) Stow the bellyaching, soldier. Remember, you're a leatherneck.
Master Chief: So that's what they're made of.
The Master Chief and Cortana, accompanied by a group of marines manning a Warthog jeep, approach a crashed lifeboat from the Pillar of Autumn.
Cortana: I've picked up reports that the Covenant have located and secured the Pillar of Autumn's crash site. The Captain is still alive, but the Covenant have captured our entire supply of Halos Brand breakfast cereal. Let's hurry and find the other survivors so we can recapture it.
Marine: There are weapons and supplies, Chief. But no cereal. And no bodies.
The Master Chief arrives on the Bridge of the Pillar of Autumn to meet Captain Keyes and Cortana.
Master Chief: Captain Keyes.
Captain Keyes: Good to see you, Master Chief. Sorry for the quick thaw. Have you had breakfast yet?
Master Chief: Not yet. And we skipped the weapons diagnostic.
Captain Keyes: There's always time for breakfast, son. How could we have fended off a dozen superior Covenant battleships if I hadn't had a good breakfast this morning?
Cortana: Oh, so YOU did that?
Dissatisfied with the crazy-AI, talking-plant route that Bungie seems to be taking with Halo 2 and Halo 3, GamePro decided to come up with their own design doc for Halo 3, featuring the Master Chief as a power-mad dictator who leveraged his defeat of the Covenant into hegemony on Earth.
With apologies to the Steve Miller Band.
When I left home, I don't even know
Have I been here before?
Ridin' along in this old Pelican
I've been thinking about my home
But my A.I. seems so far away
And there are things that I've left undone
Somebody's trying to make me stay
You know I've got to be movin' on
Oh, big ol' UNSC cruiser
Don't carry me too far away
Oh, big ol' UNSC cruiser
Cause it's here that I've got to stay
DoomBatINC created this image for a SomethingAwful Photoshop Phriday feature fusing food and videogames. Certainly, the "long lasting rampancy bar" enriched with "Strauss protein blend" must be how an ordinary cybernetic security guard was able to face down the Pfhor and two rampant AIs over three games without ever once sitting down to a real meal.
Although two panelists-- Al Lowe, Leisure Suit Larry creator and Erik Wolpaw, better known as Old Man Murray and a writer on Psychonauts were no-shows, attendees at the Game Writers Conference were treated to a few laughs by Wideload Games' Matt Soell and Tom Abernathy of Pandemic, makers of Destroy All Humans!
Making gamers laugh is a serious business, made more serious by the fact that comedy is not as well established a subgenre of games as it is of film. Still, said Soell, comedy has its place:
With apologies to Tennyson. BOLL deserves some blame for inadvertently causing this.
Half a klick, half a klick,
half a click, even further
Into the unnatural formation
Drove the Chief and Cortana.
Forward the Warthog!
"Aim for the grunts!" he said;
Into the unnatural formation
Drove the Chief and Cortana.
With apologies to Gilbert, Sullivan, and HunterX11 who started it.
We are the very model of a modern Halo IRC,
We've information Forerunner, Covenant and UNSC,
We know the prophet hierarchs and quote the drama ILB,
Play Marathon and Halo, too, sometimes even on XBC.
We're very well acquainted, too, with ICQ and IMDB,
About rampant speculation extremely skeptical are we,
With many useless facts about the status of the great journey.
Frankie has taken advantage of the gap between seasons 4 and 5 of Red vs Blue to interview Burnie, much like the Greeks exploited the Trojans' weakness for equine statuary. Within, a plot to eliminate the show's best character is revealed!
At the end of the last season, it looked like we might be getting a new cast member. Can you tell us if you have plans to introduce any other new cast members?
This webcam image, spotted by serpx and posted by Louis Wu at HBO, seems to support the mention of Mister Chief t-shirts in a Bungie Weekly Update a few weeks ago.