an Australia-based gaming site that humorously advertises itself as being both slow and late, has finally got around to recycling several busted rumors about Bungie and Halo into the bold prediction that Halo 3 is being done by a developer other than Bungie.
Now, to start off, this idea is not half as ridiculous as it sounds; I pondered it myself not a few weeks ago (although for the life of me I cannot find where-- it's possible it was done only in IRC).
What is ridiculous are the five points they cite as evidence of this:
* Bungie has repeatedly refused to confirm the name of their next title. Why? If it was Halo 3, why would they bother not telling us?
There is a little something here. Bungie itself gave mixed messages right after the release of Halo 2, with some quotes indicating that the studio was going to do something different. Maybe they are. However, Microsoft's only other high-profile in-house development studio that would seem to be a match is Rare, and they have their own franchises, Perfect Dark and Conker, to worry about, not to mention the Xbox 360 showcase, Kameo. It's difficult to see what would be gained by shuffling work around like that.
If it was an external developer, no doubt they'd want to publicize their involvement with the Halo franchise to make maximum value of it. Nothing's been said at all. I'd guess that whether the logic is flawed or not, Bungie's reasons for keeping quiet about what they are working on are separate from the question of who, if anyone, is working on Halo 3. (click "read more" below for the rest of the article)
narcogen · Tue, 2005-11-29 06:58 · bungie · halo 3 · rumor - narcogen's blog · 8 comments · read more · quote
Contents May Settle During Shipping
The Weekly What's Update at Bungie.net is loosely packed with... stuff this week. Frankie says that Bungie's next project-- as yet still unnamed-- is generating tangible results:
The cool thing of course, is that we are very much in the world of HD flat panels alive with color and surprises. I can walk by a monitor now and see hard results. Animation. Lighting. Crazy new shader effects. Technical possibilities that boggle the mind. Occasionally, I will hear world-shaking noises coming from Marty's studio.
What is it? When will it come out? Still there's no date except "many, many moons from now" which is too vague even for GameStop.
In other stuff, there's another playlist update coming, as well as the Blow Me Away charity auction being done in conjunction with HBO.
narcogen · Fri, 2005-10-28 21:13 · bungie · halo 3 · update - add new comment · quote
Ignorance Is Bliss
We're inclined to ignore reports from GamePro about supposed Halo 3 preorder dates at GameStop, for obvious reasons. Oops...
narcogen · Wed, 2005-10-19 23:25 · halo 3 · rumor · shopping - add new comment · quote
More Halo 3 Rumors Swirl
If not announcing Halo 3 was supposed to stop speculation about it... it isn't working.
More rumors about the game that may or may not exist have been going around; one very specious one that the game is "44% done", and another that a screenshot would be out this month.
Take both with as much salt as you can stand.
narcogen · Mon, 2005-10-17 23:57 · halo 3 · rumor - add new comment · quote
New York Times: 'Perfect Dark' Is No 'Halo'
Seth Schiesel at the old grey lady wrote his impressions of the Xbox 360 after sitting down with one at Microsoft's X05 show in Amsterdam last week. While Bungie wasn't showing anything, it is impossible for the new console to escape the shadow of its star franchise, even when nothing's actually been said about it. In comparison, it seems that the shooter slated for the marquee spot in the 360's launch lineup is faring very well:
As for the games themselves, it became clear at X05 that it was utterly unfair to the team making Perfect Dark Zero to thrust that game into the role of Halo's heir. The original Halo, in 2001, was the game that almost single-handedly made the Xbox a must-buy for serious console gamers. As the debut first-party (meaning it is being published by Microsoft itself) shooter for the 360, Perfect Dark Zero has been expected to fill the Halo role for the new system. It won't. Perfect Dark Zero is fun and well made, but does not appear to be an expectation-shattering leap forward for the first-person shooter genre the way Halo was.
Schiesel liked the look of Rare's Kameo much better, likening it to a Zelda-type adventure game, but with more action, and Epic's Gears of War, due out next year.
NOTE: Use the login/password pair "rampancy/rampant" if you don't have an account at the NYT.
narcogen · Sat, 2005-10-08 06:42 · business · halo 3 · offtopic · preview · xbox - add new comment · quote
Peter Freaking Jackson
A double dose of Weekly What's Update this week. SketchFactor got himself all primed to fill in for an ailing Frankie, and then Frankie used his dying breath to provide the real update. What a trooper. For all the verbiage, most of it is rehash of the week's events-- a Halo character to appear in DOA4 and the announcement of, in Frankie's words, Peter Freaking Jackson as the Executive Producer of the Halo film.
The only hint at anything new is "special props to Charlie (Gough), (Mat) Noguchi and the programming team who've been pulling monstrous hours on the creation of essential tools for our next project."
narcogen · Sat, 2005-10-08 00:43 · bungie · film · halo · halo 3 · update - add new comment · quote
Halo What?
Microsoft continues to play cagey with information about the Halo franchise in the aftermath of Gates' E3 comments and the absence of an official announcement by Bungie.
Interviewing Peter Moore and J Allard, Game Informer had the following exchange:
GI: Would you hold Halo 3 for the same time as the launch for the movie?
Moore: Halo what? What are you talking about?
Yeah, that's clever. The article does actually have information in it, too-- about the Xbox 360's launch lineup and some commentary on the process by which the Halo movie project came to be.
narcogen · Fri, 2005-10-07 00:05 · business · film · halo 3 · interview · xbox - add new comment · quote
'When It's Ready'
A recent back-and-forth in the HBO forum, as well as numerous references to quotes involving Halo, possibly Halo 3, and release dates in the past year led me to want to try and collate a bunch of these references.
First, let's take this quote from Robbie Bach at Microsoft:
"We're going to ship it when it's ready. [...] You have to be careful with franchises like this."
That sounds like Halo 3, doesn't it? Sound just like what Bach said about Halo at X05, right?
Wrong.
That was about Halo 2, back in January of 2004. The upshot? Halo games get released "when they're ready".
Is that true? Click "read more" below.
narcogen · Thu, 2005-10-06 07:08 · business · halo 3 · rant - narcogen's blog · 4 comments · read more · quote
Bungie Confirms 'Leaked' Halo 3 Script A Fake
Frankie posted a very no-nonsense denial of the purported script for Halo 3 that we mentioned yesterday, calling it "either fake, or the fanfic of a dedicated Halo fan being passed off as real."
narcogen · Wed, 2005-10-05 23:24 · bungie · halo 3 · rumor - add new comment · quote
Fake Halo 3 Script Fails To Convince
Yesterday, Kotaku reported on a thread in the TeamXbox Forums that supposedly had a "leaked" copy of the script for Halo 3, in the form of a 119 page (barely 118 not including the cover, looks like the author was shooting for 117) PDF file entitled "Draft4". Shortly thereafter, the thread in the TXB forums was taken down. Kotaku updated their story with a link to the original source-- this thread in the RichesWillRust forum, to which many new users flocked to register and download the file. Meanwhile, several pages of comments on that thread were apparently deleted by a forum mod. |
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