Rampancy.net will have its own Halo 3 FAQ of course, but in the meantime, we've taken the Bungie.net FAQ and read between the lines a little bit, just to whet everyone's appetite.
To see Bungie's questions and answers interspersed with my own commentary and additional questions, click "read more" from the front page.
The game was revealed to the world at the Microsoft press conference at Grauman's Chinese Theater, in Hollywood, CA. By the time you read this, the announcement trailer should be available for download on bungie.net and directly to your Xbox 360, in full HD glory from Xbox Live Marketplace. Read no further if you want to avoid spoilers.
Nobody saw it coming. Halo 3! Who knew? For the last year or two, people have speculated about what our next project was and surprisingly, in all that time, not a single person guessed that it would be Halo 3. Not one.
As everyone else living in a normal timezone already knows, Bungie announced that Halo 3 is in development for the Xbox 360 and is expected to be released in 2007. The announcement says in no uncertain terms that this is the final game in the Halo series, confirming what others have suspected: that about nine years is enough to make even the most interesting scenario boring to developers that aren't SquareSoft.
Welcome to level 3: The Slammer. Unfortunately, I don't really like this level. It is pretty short, and not too interesting. The parts that are meant to be great fights end up being a little too easy, and retracing steps is always a no no in a game (except for Resident Evil and Tomb Raider... I still don't know why anyone likes them). Here is how to beat level 3, although there is less strategy needed than there is shooting accuracy.
Also, if you notice a lack of lovely 800x600 captured content, my apologies. My capture card is fubar, and to the extent that it likes to drag my whole computer down with it. So for now, no more nice pictures, but if I ever get the chance, I will go back and old ones.
A side note to the rest of you: I hope you read this guide incorectly, and that in doing so, you have trouble beating the level.
The Slammer
Kill all of the prisoners! Once you leave the lineup room, there will be three detectives. I usually just fart, because it is embarrassing to die this early on in the level. Right out of the lineup room, go right twice (into the room for viewing the lineup). Just to the right of the door is the first of what seems to be very few hippos in this level (Commentary 1). Push your zombie army (should be about 6) into the next couple of rooms to help clear out the cops.
Click "read more" from the front page to read the entire article.
After I completed my last Banshee piece (the narrated video), I felt that I was done with this series. I’d said most of what I had to say, and moreover, it was coming up to the point that I was ready to quit Halo PC in general. I had never wanted to “overstay my welcome” and linger past my prime, growing steadily less effective as a wave of new players continually reminded me of what I no longer could do.
I did in fact make an official “retirement” from the game. However, more than a year later, I found myself still picking the game up from time to time, and recently I’ve been playing regularly again. No matter how poor this game may be, I cannot help but love the Banshee. So here I am, with one final article, on a few last points regarding what I have always called the most critical skills of the capable Banshee pilot: positioning, angles, and fundamentals.
[image:10099 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] I'm so thoroughly convinced now that Halo 3 is actually being made that I've had the Halo 3 logo tattooed on my own baby-soft flesh, an experience I can assure you is not entirely unlike enduring plasma weapons fire.
Can someone send me sheet music for On A Pale Horse for Piano and Peril for Piano at doctaknocka@hotmail.com? thanks.
Rockslider has put up another piece on Halo 1; this one covers how to lure Banshees into areas they don't normally belong, and the strange behavior they exhibit once they get there. This piece covers level 2, "Halo".
Quite what the explanation for the weird behaviour is, I don't know. I find the grenade chasing business especially baffling. What on earth is there in the game programming that makes them so interested in grenades in these areas, yet not in the valley? Is it actually some sort of 'Easter egg' somebody sneaked in? Seems doubtful; I'm guessing it's some unintended consequence of the Banshee being in an environment that wasn't planned for. If anyone reading this can shed some light on these behaviours or has a theory, I'd be happy to hear about it!
Having just played the first few levels of the original game this weekend, I also noticed some of the same Banshee behavior, as well as some other, related non-Banshee behavior.
I have a feeling that the scripting for Banshee pilots (or perhaps any AI unit using a vehicle like a Banshee, Wraith, or Shade turret) is "overlaid" on top of that unit's basic AI routines. So the normal Banshee behaviors we're used to seeing, such as the dive-bombing and so on, only exists in environmental areas where Bungie expected Banshees to be, and often times wrote specific scripts for specific areas.
Click 'read more' from the front page for the entire article.
WARNING: This article contains spoilers not only for the Halo games but also the Half-Life games, so beware!
I'm not writing about Halo 3 this week.
Really, I'm not. Instead, I'm taking a side-by-side look at two of the biggest FPS games today: Halo and Half-Life.
Before anyone had ever heard of Halo, I was already cursing the luck that put all the games I wanted to play onto hardware I didn't own: namely, the PC of a good friend, where I got to see the original Half-Life and play a bit of it. I was immediately reminded of the first Unreal game as well as Marathon. It seemed to be a game that, while it was a first-person shooter, was unlike most of the games in that genre that were popular at the time: twitch games where character and story took a back seat to action and colored lighting.
Of course, in about the same span of time there was actually real, tangible, factual information to be had:
As the philosopher once said, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty". Those areas certainly are a bit less defined these days, as rumors about Bungie, its flagship Halo franchise, and the Xbox it rode in on are flying fast and furious.
We're emulating one of HBO's more apropos mottos this week: beating dead horses. Really.
An offhand remark in the HBO forum about the lack of information in the Weekly Updates prompted a reasonably long thread, not just about the updates, but about the lack of information about what Bungie is working on, and branching out into the general parameters of Bungie's relationship with its fans, through those Weekly Updates and other methods.
Shishka, a former fan now working with Bungie on that project they aren't ready to talk about, had an interesting comment that I think addressed a key idea, but in a way that set me off down a completely different path, the results of which you are about to see laid before you, for good or ill.
Shishka wrote:
I think when a lot of people came into the community after discovering Halo, they learned of Bungie's connection with the community, but misinterpreted it. People have become so used to media extravaganzas, information blowouts, and gigantic hype engines that Bungie's relative silence at the beginning of development on a new title is a completely foreign concept to them. It's really not new, though.
That got me to thinking. Has Halo really spoiled the Bunige fanbase? Are we now so used to media blitzes that we aren't satisfied just to know Bungie is diligently working on what will doubtless be a fantastic game? Even before that, did the Halo and Halo 2 Updates make us so used to getting relatively substantive information so constantly that the sound of a few months of silence is deafening?
While Bungie fans are perhaps understandably curious and impatient, however, I do not think they have grown unreasonable. Nor do I think they've been spoiled, or become less patient. In fact, since Halo was announced, lengthening release cycles have required Bungie fans to be even more patient.
To substantiate that, I dug around for some dates and other information and created the Bungie Timeline; a list of important events in Bungie's history from 1993 to present. It is by no means complete; but major milestones in releases and developments, including Minotaur, Pathways Into Darkness, the Marathon trilogy, the Myth series, and Halo and Halo 2 are included, along with the acquisition of Bungie by Microsoft. I'm still collecting more information, but if you know about a date I've overlooked but should include, or if you've caught me making a mistake, drop me a line at narcogen@rampancy.net.
Hi! I'm new here, and I'm just DYING to get the Halo 2 sheet music for any and all instruments, so that me and my friends can play it. If you have it, please send it to my email at Jmb301530@aol.com, because I'm going to be out of town for a bit. Thanks!
Reading this week's update might tempt you into becoming a cradle-robber. Or at least a crib-robber.
This week's Bungie Update is special.
No, not that special, so get your mind off Halo 3 the unnamed project.