Halopedia:Bungie Weekly Update 06-10-05



This is the Bungie Weekly Update of June 10, 2005, written by Frank O'Connor.

Bungie Update
Nothing much happened this week, although some Australian bloke hurled a phone at me. Halo movie tales are spewing out of Hollywood like overheated popcorn and the release of the last five maps gets closer and closer. We actually reveal what to expect in terms of matchmaking and otherwise, we wish you all a great weekend.

Sanjay asks,,

Who won the Halo world championships and what role did Bungie have in the event?

Some Dutch kid! He owned. You can read about it here:

Halo 2 World Championships

And the event was hosted by the Xbox Live team, not by Bungie. Congrats to the winner and the finalists though.

Moviegoers ask,

Have you read the Halo movie script?

I've read an early draft of the script, and it rules. I heart Alex Garland's stuff anyway, from The Tesseract to 28 Days Later. Garland also wrote the script for an upcoming Sci-Fi flick, Sunshine, which you can read more about here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448134/

Best thing about Alex, apart from his ability to type awesomeness, is that he's actually a Halo fan, and he really, really gets it.

Angry Yoofs ask,

How come none of the Bungie staff or moderators ever respond to PMs?

I currently have 750 PMs. We simply don't have the time to get into hundreds of discussions which the majority of the time deal with questions and topics that have been covered elsewhere on the site. Or are death threats from irate 11 year olds. The mods? They are just regular people who have their own lives and they only have so much time to spend helping on Bnet. .

Jilted Lovers ask,

Are the stats going to be reset again when the new maps are released in July?

We currently do not have any plans to reset player stats when the new maps are released. The reason we reset the stats and leaderboards last time was more due to the auto update than releasing four new maps. In light of rampant cheating we felt that prior stats were mostly invalid and meaningless. The auto update bug fixes and some fairly major gameplay changes were enough to warrant a fresh start and a clean slate for everyone.

Sandy Crack asks,

''Why won't you JUST ACCEPT MY FRIEND REQUEST. Oh, and play 'Misty' for me.''

I would love to, but my list is almost always full. The only time it's not, is when I have to clear space for a Humpday challenge. I, and other Bungie guys get dozens of requests, sometimes in a matter of hours, and realistically, the only thing we can do is run through and delete 'em. To apologize, we'd have to accept your request, type a message, then delete it. After the 8th time, that gets kinda old... So here's a blanket apology to everyone nice enough to send us friend requests that we have to turn down. Sorry!

PS., we still accept requests from hot chicks.

Stinky asks,

Hey, what's going to happen to the Team Preview matchmaking playlist on July 5th when the new maps are available?

The current maps in Team Preview will become free by July 5th and will be integrated back into the regular free playlists. Team Preview will then incorporate the five new maps across a variety of team based games like it does right now. In addition, we will be adding a "Rumble Preview" playlist to give players who purchase the five new maps additional gaming options.

When Team Preview is reset with the new maps, we will be resetting the leaderboards/ranks for that playlist (and ONLY that playlist).

At the end of the summer once all of the maps are free, all the Preview playlists will be removed and all maps will be integrated into the free playlists.

Keyes86 asks,

When the map pack is out, will the "making-of" documentary and "cinematic featurette" only be viewable on the Xbox, or will I be able to pop the disc into my DVD player? I ask this because another game (I won't say which) had special videos that would only play on the Xbox. I'm really concerned because I don't want to shell out $30 for the Xbox remote control when I already have a perfectly fine dvd player.

Hrms. This is a weird question. You don't need a DVD remote to play the movies on our disc, just a regular ole Xbox. It uses a proprietary licensed video Codec that plays in our map pack's interface at very high quality. And even if you did need a DVD remote (because it was encoded as a regular DVD) it would work fine on any DVD player. So I'm kind of confused about what happened with the game you aren't naming.

Super_Panda asks,

Question: Will there ever be a "Special Edition" of HALO 1 released for Xbox or Xbox 360 with Online multiplayer (and maybe some new maps or something)?

That's unlikely. Not out of the question, but not something Bungie has in its sights right now. We're busy working on other things. That said, it seems likely that original Halo and Halo 2 will be among the games supported by Xbox 360's backward compatibility.

Weaklerdrake's poll on our forums asks,

''When we're dual-wielding, we shouldn't have to drop our left hand weapon. BUT WE DO.''

Well, you don't have to. In most cases, players will hold one range weapon, say a rocket launcher or a Battle Rifle and one mid- range burst weapon, like an SMG. The trick is to manage what you hold so that you have the best selection of weapons for your play style. Personally I like to have an SMG and a Plasma pistol dual-wielded with a Rocket Launcher or a Sword on my never-seen imaginary backpack. It's designed like this for a nice mixture of variety, strategy and balance. Believe me, we tried other schemes, and this one worked best for us.

And finally, Oddleif asks, What would Mister Chief look like if you drew him in less than thirty seconds?

Really good, actually. Practically the best one ever.