Yes! Weekly Bungie Update: Today!

11 pages worth of information(if you\'re using the default post view), a whole bunch of media and impressions about since E3 started, and he has to ask me what he should discuss. Jesus Christ.

thats no fun gink

discuss away

when the PC version comes out, ill let you know how i really feel

http://www.indiemagazine.co.uk/cgi-bin/news.cgi?section=1&id=2582

Major campaign expected…

Xbox: Halo 2, due out in November
With the eagerly awaited Halo 2 pencilled in for an early November release, Microsoft is looking to back the launch of the game with its biggest ever marketing campaign.

Speaking exclusively to Indie Magazine at last week’s E3 in Los Angeles, head of UK marketing Xbox Stephen McGill said of the launch: “We’re trying to make it as much of a worldwide launch as we can… We’re looking at inspiration from the big movies and how they launch.

“It needs to be an industry event; it’s a really good opportunity to showcase some amazing new technology and Live features – that we’ll start unveiling over the summer – that will just blow people away about what you can do online. And the game deserves a lot of love and attention and its day in the sun, so we can’t wait.

“We’re going to launch it in some unusual ways. Normally Microsoft’s really open about our games and shows them really early. [With Halo 2] we’re going to be quite careful about how we show it, when we show it and who we show it to up to launch.”

“It is going to be the biggest game, we hope it’s going to be the biggest game, we believe it can be the biggest game on Xbox or on any platform almost, so we’ve got big hopes for it. We’re going to do a lot of activity around it,” concluded McGill.

Worldwide launch, tons of publicity for one of the most anticipated title of 2004 already. November is going to be insane, I don\'t think that can be said quite enough. HALO 2\'s also going to be advertised in some big movies this summer/fall as well.

Moving on: New Screenshots up at Bungie.net!

LINK

Last two. The first of those two is great!

IGN\'s got two more articles about HALO 2\'s multiplayer up, they\'re pretty good reads:

"Second Time Around"

"Halo 2: Revisited"

Interesting piece of information in the first link... He said that all vehicles have a boost function, does this mean the Warthog has this feature as well? Not just Covenant vehicles?...

Nineteenth update, originally posted at HBO

Bungie Weekly Update May 21 2004

What gives!!?? HBO two weeks in a row? Not really. Last week\'s came off sounding fake, and there was no Mister CHief. So we OWE HBO this one.

I can\'t even tell you how excited everyone was after E3 – a mixture of fatigue, elation and excitement meant for varying degrees of glassy-eyed wonder when the small contingent we sent there arrived back. As planned, the E3 demo was a minor speed bump, hardly interfered with production at all, and in fact helped tremendously with some feedback from players and reaction to new stuff. Personally, I had a great time. People love Halo, and I got to bask in some of the reflected glory. But back at the ranch…

SONIC THE GRIESEMER

 
Right after E3 Jaime went to work tweaking the physics on vehicles.
 
Mostly he has been building on what we showed at E3.  Some of this involves tweaking, including the addition o fan extended camera shake for all the grenades so you can feel them from farther away, reduced the number of needles requires for a super-detonation, that kind of thing.  He\'s also added some new weapons to the mix, which of course we can\'t mention here, but both are VERY different from each other.  Once you have a solid balance, like we did for E3, you have to add new elements very carefully so you don’t throw it out of whack.
 
Jaime and the team are also working on a final calibration of some of the fundamental systems like time, damage transfer, gravity and collision damage.  These are broad, sweeping systems that you have to nail down fairly early. Jaime says he feels like we know enough about our missions and gameplay to do this now, which is important because we won’t be able to re-visit them later.  He says it’s hard work but it will form a solid foundation for the rest of the game.
 
Jaime says we recorded a ton of combat dialog.  And he says that our combat dialog plan is basically insane.  Jaime argues that the combat dialog in Halo 1 still holds up well, but that Halo 2’s dialog will make it look primitive.  He says that the AI is so much more aware of what is going on around it, we couldn’t help but take advantage of that with more dialog.  He\'s pretty sure we recorded more unique lines for one character than we had in all of Halo 1.
 
Jaime\'s also been spending a lot of time this week setting up a brand new Covenant vehicle. He thinks it is the coolest-looking Covenant vehicle so far and he can’t wait to get it into the game. He wouldn\'t tell us if it was single, multiplayer or both.
 
BONUS QUESTION: Jaime – what was the coolest thing you saw at E3?
 
For the first time in 5 years I didn’t get to go to E3.  I was too busy writing combat dialog and wrangling the character behaviors.  The new Zelda looks damn cool though.  Link is a total badass.

SUPER BUTCHER BROS.

Chris has been working diligently been working on time control for PAL vs. NTSC builds... he says that sounds lame but it might let us do some cool in-game slow-mo features if we so chose, but only if they were implemented in some cool, non-clichéd way. And he\'s been planning for an epic Halo 2-related project, which is going to be fricking insane. Australasian, European and other territories will be pleased to hear that we\'re doing cool stuff with the PAL versions to make them look good AND play nice with NTSC over LIVE. PAL time control is very important to Chris so that he can play against his 56-year old father on Xbox live. He lives in New Zealand, so the ping might be a bit hard to take, but Chris will let him host. :-)
 
Other stuff... Chris says not much else that’s really that cool, other than the fact that we’ve been doing flythroughs of some of our levels over the past few days and they’re beautiful. Why are they so beautiful? Chris says the artists have had a lot more time in Halo 2 to concentrate on things like line of sight and vistas, and in Chris\'s own words, "Zanzibar can’t have any truly gorgeous visuals because it has to be a multiplayer map, there is stuff coming down the pipe that makes it look like hang ‘em high by comparison."

And on E3: "Coolest thing I saw on the web as e3 coverage was God of War. Beautiful, beautiful animation. Makes me wish we could show off our new animation system with a third person fighting game... I miss Konoko."

BUBSY THE BUTKUS

We asked John Butkus, the tallest animator, what cool stuff he\'d been up to (this was Thursday night, Hockey fans…):

"If you consider re-doing all the Elite animations with him holding a Brute weapon cool, then yes I guess that is cool shit.  Let’s see, since we spoke last I’ve finished up a large, intimidating alien, given the elite a Brute weapon, given him animations for that and for the driver and gunner of a new Covenant vehicle, and another Elite\'s first-person animations for the Brute weapon as well.
 
The pace has been kind of frantic for the past few weeks and I didn’t really let up last week during E3, so I kind of feel like death warmed over right now.  You know when you’re so tired, that you forget what day it is and you can’t even form coherent sentences?  Yeah, it’s like that. I’ve been trying to work extra fast so that tomorrow I can get all the details on the cinematic I’m hopefully going to be starting some time tomorrow afternoon.  I’d like to get it started tomorrow so that I can plug away at it on the weekend a bit.  It’s the first cinematic being done for the game, and it has Master Chief approaching a bridge…and it\'s going to be so friggin’ cool, it’s not even funny.

Sorry, getting a little sidetracked because I’m monitoring the Lightning/Flyers NHL game right now.  I’m a diehard Flyers fan, and if they lose tonight they’re out of the playoffs…so if that happens, I will be ‘sick’ tomorrow i.e., hung-over from drowning my sorrows, so I hope they win tonight and force a game 7.
 
As for your bonus question, I didn’t go to E3 so I didn’t see anything cool.  Oh okay, I did read the internet a bit and the PSP looks hot as hell and I will probably buy one even though I’ll only end up using it like three days out of the year."

STATEN THE TIME SWEEPER

Joseph Staten, our very own director of cinematics has been a busy, busy bee!

"The last few weeks have been all about combat dialog. I have some favorite lines, but I don’t want to give anything away. OK, maybe just one…

(One of the marines’ responses to being stared at by the player for a long time)
“Most people don\'t like having a gun pointed in their face. Me? I love it.”

Our cast is pretty locked-down. They’ll be some returning favorites, as well as a whole bunch of new very exciting, very talented folks (most of whom are big ‘ol Halo fans – an unexpected benefit!).

CJ and I continue to crank away on the videomatics. This week we’re revisiting some of the moments in the Halo2 announcement trailer, and putting them into their final context. I’m only authorized to say three words: ride the pickle. Let the fans chew on that!

And the coolest thing I say at E3? Well, since I was only there for the press-briefing it’s a toss-up between the really cute Edelman PR woman manning the power-point presentation (her blue sweater, in particular), and Muhammad Ali.

Clearly, I have priority problems."

- Joseph

AERO THE WALPOLE

Nathan reports from the dark precipice of the animation station:

Mike Budd is still trouncing on some great animation of a secret character and it looks damn good.

Billmation is giving the Grunt some glory. You will respect the little ones this time around guys.

*Frankienote: Yeah – Butcher showed me the grunt animation in slo-mo and it was totally badass.

John has finished off a secret character that will be great fun to play around. I wish I could say more. Oh, he has been doing some more Elite stuff with a new vehicle…

I have been working on the Brute this past week. After the recent E3 crunch it is nice to move back onto a vastly different character. I have been working on some animations for some cool AI behavior that is guaranteed to have players pooping themselves, changing their underpants only to poop themselves again… I have been watching some biker movies and National Geographic films for reference. Mr. Brute, may I introduce you to your cousins Black Rhino, Silverback Gorilla and Brian Bosworth?

As far as E3 goes I am excited over a few games. Full Spectrum Warrior is a game that I will either love or hate, but I would definitely give props to the dev team. There is lot of great detail in Full Spectrum Warrior. A few titles like Rise of the Kasai and God of War have me yearning to do some fun animation like that and may see me picking up a PS2 to play them. They are beautifully animated games!

So that\'s it for this week folks, and we\'ll lead you out with something so horrible, Mister Chief refused to be a part of it...

What else, what else... Oh! HALO 2 FAQ has been updated at Bungie.net, and there are new wallpapers for HALO 2, and HALO(Xbox)... Nothing special, but check \'em out anyways.

Originally posted by Nu
originally posted at ******

do these updates not get posted directly from Bungie?

After all there weekly updates...will there be anything to suprise us come november ?

/me wouldn\'t be shocked if a week before launch bungie release a AVI or Quicktime movie of the ending of HALO2.

Originally posted by PS2_-\'_\'-_PS2
do these updates not get posted directly from Bungie?

Yeah, they do. Frankie, who is part of the Bungie Community Team, posts them at various HALO-related fansites/forums every week. It\'s the same way Matt Soell did his weekly updates for the first game.

Originally posted by ooseven
After all there weekly updates...will there be anything to suprise us come november ?

/me wouldn\'t be shocked if a week before launch bungie release a AVI or Quicktime movie of the ending of HALO2.

... Are you reading them, ooseven? These updates aren\'t telling us much of anything about HALO 2\'s story, or much of the gameplay elements that haven\'t already been revealed through the two E3 videos. He may throw out a hint every now and then(like the mention of a new Covenant vehicle that holds at least 2 people, a driver and a gunner), but those are far and few between...

These are progress/development updates, but they tell don\'t tell us too much about the final product, my friend.

Originally posted by mm
me > black samurai

im sorry you never realized this

You\'re the only one on the board that thinks so.  Hmmm, someone thats well respected or you?

it\'s not a matter of thinking
more like knowing

After all there weekly updates...will there be anything to suprise us come november ?

yeah, how awefully damn close it resembles halo 1

Artistic choices aside, this game doesn\'t look anything like the first game. That statement is outrageous.

perhaps  your blind allegiance to bungie is

Perhaps you\'re still glancing at those blurry showfloor shots pages back.

What we\'ve seen of HALO 2\'s multiplayer is already a step above what Bungie accomplished before, and the single player campaign(while still staying consistant with multiplayer\'s visuals, like the first game) will be even better.

any news on PC release date?

Nothing at all, but...

Q What systems will Halo 2 be available for?

A Halo 2 is being made for the Xbox only at this time.

That\'s from the HALO 2 FAQ at Bungie.net. It\'s not much, but... Given the sales of the PC version, and the small but relatively respectable community it\'s created... It\'s pretty safe to assume a PC port of HALO 2 will hit later on.

... Much later on, of course.