[image:10167 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] IGN's Halo 3 Announcement Trailer gallery had four images in it not published by Bungie. We've now added them to the gallery here. We've now subdivided the Halo 3 Images page into separate galleries: one for storyboards, and one for screen captures from the trailer itself. As other images are released we'll create separate galleries for them.

Douglass C. Perry at IGN has posted a blow by blow description of the Halo 3 trailer. It's awkwardly worded at points-- the reference to "two remaining Spartan soldiers" has some fans scratching their heads, but I think it's just an oblique reference to Kelly, who obviously does not appear in the trailer, and the Master Chief, who does.

We've put up a second copy of the Halo E3 2006 Announcement Trailer; this one weighs in at a much lighter 25 megabytes and is encoded in DivX 5, suitable for Macs or PCs, for those who don't like QuickTime or whose computers (like mine) have a bit of trouble keeping up with the high-resolution H.264 version.

Another pre-release award segment, this one for Best Male Performance, is up at the Rockets On Prisoner 2005 website, hosted by That Weasel TV. Thanks to Spartan 777 who pointed it out in the HBO forum.

The new "My Boyfriend's Back" trailer for Stubbs the Zombie is a riot-- a zombie riot, but a riot nonetheless. And as the game shipped today for the Xbox-- go buy a copy!

At Rampancy we've been quite remiss in reporting on the Rockets on Prisoner 2005 awards for fan-made films. The RoP site still says that the awards ceremony has been delayed, but instead, they've been releasing videos with the nominees and winners in individual categories over the past few weeks.

So far, videos for the following awards have been posted on the RoP site:

Halo 2 tricking now has its very own O'Reilly book. Halo 2 beta tester Stephen Cawood has written Halo 2 Hacks, with a forward by Ducain, Louis Wu and Grenadiac. Thanks HIH.

BetaNews has put up twelve screenshots of the Xbox 360's user interface, showing various features such as the Games blade (Zorro the Games Blade?), the Xbox Live blade, the Xbox Live Marketplace, video messages (there's a bad id

IGN has a new Stubbs the Zombie video up now-- this one shows split-screen coop play, Stubbs style. Note the extra indicators in the HUD compared to split screen play in Halo; the symbol over the other player's head is a number, rather than just an arrow, and other indicators are placed on the screen for various objects, including vehicles.

Next Generation has picked up a post from Tadhg Kelly's blog, suggesting that as in-engine cutscenes become more detailed, the gap between those images and photorealism becomes actually more pronounced-- and that the only real resolution to this problem is a return to full motion video for cutscenes, using real actors. Halo is cited as support for this:

This week's Weekly What's Update points out that Bungie's "Fight the Flood" T-shirts have raised over $120,000 to help the American Red Cross' relief efforts following the devestation of Hurricane Katrina. There are also a few movie tidbits ("ages away") word on Bungie's new digs (ready, moving next week) and a visit from Claude "Louis Wu" Errera of Bungie.org, whom we've been promised is not going to find out anything about the "secret" new project.