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All News Marked with Halo Spoiler TagNovember 13, 2004 A three-year-old mystery... solved Anton P. Nym found a tidbit in the Art of Halo book that might explain why there are no Flood Hunters... nice!(Louis Wu 19:03:49 UTC) (permalink)  September 1, 2004 Tricks Tricks and more Tricks Four tricks movies showed up on our forum in the last day or so; pretty wide range of size and interest. First post was from foxygrandpa117; he posted about a pair of vids a clanmember of his, wOot, made. The first shows a coop pair riding the initial pelican in AotCR down to the bottom of the pit; the trick is old, but nobody's bothered to document the entire ride, I don't think. WMP9 format, 7.7 mb. The second is random trick stuff; it's the sort of video we'd decline to host if it were submitted here, because every single trick has been shown in other vids, but it's a nice compilation of stuff, if you're not a rabid downloader. WMP9 format, 21.7 mb. Then there was a post from vshields ash, pointing out a vid made by fluit (and originally posted at highimpacthalo.org). This one shows some platform-to-platform hog launching at the top of AotCR. Nice distance. WMP9 format, 2.7 mb. Finally, Madrox and Monoxide continue with their 'getting stuff into the AotCR underground pit' series, this time actually working on Two Betrayals, and bringing down a flood combat form. WMP9 format, 10.7 mb. (This is enough to get this post spoiler-labeled.) Nice to see that Halo tricking is still going strong!(Louis Wu 14:26:35 UTC) (permalink) July 14, 2004 Happy Birthday, BOLL! BOLL turned 22 today. How many people give YOU a present on THEIR birthday? BOLL gives you this cool wallpaper. Enjoy.(Louis Wu 11:44:02 UTC) (permalink) July 3, 2004 Gurgling in the dark Rockslider posted a new Frontline with Suzie yesterday - this one has Suzie talking to the Flood. Weird - I didn't know they COULD talk!(Louis Wu 15:01:27 UTC) (permalink) May 20, 2004 Cute? No. Looks like Bungie's showing off one the Series 5 Flood action figure; there's a Flood carrier (and his little popcorn friend) on the Bungie Webcam at the moment. (Pic saved here for posterity.) Thanks, 3.(Louis Wu 19:49:58 UTC) (permalink) December 3, 2003 Halo Spikes the Competition The Spike TV Video Game Awards were given out last night in Las Vegas, and though they won't air on Spike TV before tomorrow night, GamerFeed has announced the winners. Halo 2 was up for 'Most Anticipated Game' - it won. Halo PC was up for 'Best PC Game' - it won. (It was also up for 'Best First-Person Action Game' - but lost to Call of Duty.) Watch the details on Spike TV tomorrow at 9 pm! Thanks to Jesper Nielsen for the heads-up. (Apologies to anyone offended by the early notice.)(Louis Wu 20:40:25 UTC) (permalink) October 11, 2003 Gearbox DID add eggs. First easter egg in Halo PC - confirmed. 'halo fan' sent in this image he captured while using the 'walk on walls' mod. Remember that the designer of Timberland is David Mertz - and his response to this discovery was amusement: Hehe, it was a matter of time before someone found it, its hard because you have to go really, really high. I'd never noticed that last tidbit about Timberland... but then, I'm usually using the fuel rod gun to take out warthogs, not shell the enemy base. Good to know!(Louis Wu 10:15:38 UTC) (permalink) May 8, 2003 Gettin' there, any way you can When you absolutely, positively need to get there overnight, and the elevator just isn't working... BOLL to the rescue. Pretty funny stuff.(Louis Wu 09:18:33 UTC) (permalink) May 3, 2003 I've seen that dude before... ...but it wasn't in Halo. Skeletor isolated a marine underground in 343 GS - and he doesn't look like any other Halo marines I know about. (Well, that's not totally true - I think it's the guy on the left in this pic - but I can't say as I've ever seen him myself in the game...) A year and a half later, and still the weirdness...(Louis Wu 01:31:16 UTC) (permalink) April 27, 2003 Picked up a WHAT? Now HERE'S a weird one. Stefander dropped off a short movie he made, showing a small oversight on Bungie's part. To reproduce it, you need a modded Xbox. Play the Maw right at the start - kill off the first wave of Flood that bust down the door. The second wave is just two guys - bump one (after it passes the broken door). Wander for a bit... and you might see this (1.6 mb, QT format). No graphics for the weapon... but it clearly used to be there. Nice! Credit to Goatrope, apparently, as well.(Louis Wu 16:43:26 UTC) (permalink) April 6, 2003 The Flood is spreading! Another review of Halo: The Flood has surfaced, this time on Subnova.(Count Zero 06:54:57 UTC) (permalink) April 1, 2003 Your Name In Lights c0ld vengeance, back from a long absence, has found what might be a pretty cool easter egg - the letters 'TR' (for Truth and Reconciliation) written out in the lights of the ship of the same name on the level Keyes. Clever!(Louis Wu 01:01:19 UTC) (permalink) February 25, 2003 Screenies - with no HUD! Spec Ops Elite came up with a pretty cool technique for taking screenshots that are similar to Bungie's cursor-less shots. They require a modded Xbox, and it only works in the latter half of the game - but if you meet these requrements, the basic steps are described in this forum post. Examples of what you can do with it are here, here, and here. (All of these images are under 50k each.) The possibilities for moviemakers are mouth-watering...(Louis Wu 18:51:54 UTC) (permalink) February 7, 2003 Look, Ma - No Hands! HUNTR-KILLR created a small (900K) movie showing the jumping ability of a floodified marine with the recent Halo hack. The library is 4 stories high... the marine has no trouble getting above the final platform in one huge leap. (For good measure, a second jump proves, once and for all, that there are no branches in the roof. If you don't know what that means... consider yourself lucky.)(Louis Wu 19:16:28 UTC) (permalink) January 21, 2003 Playing with Fire Yesterday, Bowser posted a note to our forum explaining how a slow run through the Maw seemed to gain extra time at Foe Hammer's pickup site. Some experimentation showed the limits of this feature. Here's a short film (23 seconds, 1.4 mb, QT format) showing a gain of almost a minute. The situation is this: when you pass into the area where you're supposed to wait for Foe Hammer, the timer drops off the screen. It doesn't come back until AFTER she is shot down, and when it DOES come back, it comes back with the amount of time that was on it when it disappeared... with an exception. The rule is this: If you enter that area with LESS than one minute on the clock, your timer will be reset to (2 minutes - your time on the clock). Go in with 59 seconds, you'll come out with 61. Go in with one second... you'll come out with 1:59. This suggests that if something happens to you on this run, and you get to this area with less than a minute on the clock, you should run it down to nearly zero before crossing into the 'pickup zone'; the longer you're willing to wait, the more time you end up with. (Of course, if you misjudge, and the timer runs out before you get in, you're dead.) Interesting find... even more interesting, in context; the game has been on the shelves for more than 14 months, and nobody noticed this before!(Louis Wu 14:44:43 UTC) (permalink) December 8, 2002 There was a fourth. You couldn't have known. While it's true that the Tricks queue has languished for months and its maintainer should be taken out and summarily shot, folks are still discovering cool stuff about Halo. Case in point: Finn, stalwart Halo Story page pillar, has discovered an unexplored area in Halo; a fourth Pulse Generator on Two Betrayals. It's not fully operational... but the architecture is complete. Some of the areas are spooky in their darkened state. Check it out on Team 7hr33's website!(Louis Wu 03:22:22 UTC) (permalink) November 11, 2002 Bizarre Maw Behavior It's not often any more that new behavior pops up in Halo. Ritalin, on our forum, discovered some that is pretty hard to explain. He was playing on the Maw, and found a spawn site for sentinels. I did some experimenting, and learned something odd; in this one particular location, the position of the player determines the stability of the sentinels! Get too close to them, and they'll explode. There is nowhere else in the game that I've ever encountered this behavior - in many places, you can run right into them, with no ill effects. Here, though... step in their path (or even close to it) and they simply explode. Anyone have any suggestions as to why this might happen? Discuss the possibilities in the forum thread!(Louis Wu 21:02:38 UTC) (permalink) September 4, 2002 The Trickster's Awake Here we are, coming up on the 10-month anniversary of the release of the Xbox... and major new glitches are STILL being discovered. Frogblast shows how to get to Keyes from the very beginning of the level Keyes... and how to get to the lifepods on the Pillar of Autumn long before you're supposed to. Wow.(Louis Wu 13:31:30 UTC) (permalink) July 26, 2002 Who said she's just a Hologram? Heh - for those who think there aren't any tricks left to find in Halo, think again. Lennox noticed an interesting interaction yesterday... and after the forum settled down and stopped calling him a liar, Warbow actually FILMED a variant. It was intriguing enough to get the attention of a Halo Dev team member... which means it's pretty likely that this behavior wasn't seen in the Bungie offices before now. Nice going, guys!(Louis Wu 00:01:57 UTC) (permalink) July 1, 2002 I think there's krazy glue on that seat... We've (okay, I've) been very remiss with respect to the Gameplay Tricks section - I'm really sorry about that. Hopefully, I'll have good news for you on that front in the not-too-distant future. (Say, before the release of Halo 2?) In the meantime, though, Warbow has submitted a movie that we could simply add to his existing trick... and therefore did. No new entry needed. Almost 4 months ago, Warbow sent in some pictures from the bottom of the Maw jump. They were cool... but they didn't show anyone how to repeat the stunt. Well, now he's turned in a movie supplement... and even after all this time, I found my jaw dropping, wondering why he wasn't dead. Check it out on the Floor of the Maw trick page.(Louis Wu 21:38:03 UTC) (permalink) June 22, 2002 When Bungie stacks levels funny Caught again... miles did some fancy footwork in order to leave a nav-pointed grunt alive at the start of Truth and Reconciliation... and hence was able to measure the distance from the arrival bay inside the Truth and Reconciliation (where you end up after going through the gravity lift) and the starting point of the level... and the interesting thing is that the ship is BELOW the start point, not above it! Bizarre...(Louis Wu 17:51:55 UTC) (permalink) June 3, 2002 The Shaft Challenge! Frogblast, a recognized master Halo trickster, has issued a challenge: Get to the bottom of the main shaft on Silent Cartographer, using NO VEHICLES. There are quite a number of other clarifications, so be sure to read his post on the subject - and good luck to all who enter! (We have nothing to do with this contest, other than being eager to see what folks come up with - this one is all Frogblast.)(Louis Wu 15:10:29 UTC) (permalink) May 18, 2002 The most awkward ruler in the galaxy xbill has developed a new measuring technique - initiated here, a couple of days ago, he has now used the NavPoint™ Warthog to measure the height of the cliff outside one of the blue beam structures - it's about 438 meters, for those of you dying to know. Anyone with some serious patience can measure distances on several levels with this tool. (This technique was first seen (by me, at least) in Frogblast's 'Mapping Silent Cartographer', posted a couple of weeks ago.)(Louis Wu 11:33:43 UTC) (permalink) April 18, 2002 Silent Cartographer Antics A rather well-documented entry has been added to the Gameplay Tricks section - there is now quite a bit of documentation on getting through the locked door on Silent Cartographer. In addition, there are a pair of bonus movies - both are from xbill; one shows how to get through that door in a jeep without explosives or beating, and the other shows some entertaining cutscene manipulation. Check it all out!(Louis Wu 15:44:42 UTC) (permalink) April 11, 2002 A pair of tricks - more coming There's a huge backlog of tricks (again) - but rather than simply making them LATER, I'm gonna put up the two I formatted today, and get to some more tomorrow. Check out the Gameplay Tricks page for the latest - some interesting views from INSIDE various Pelicans... and some amazing jump work. More on the way!(Louis Wu 01:15:20 UTC) (permalink) April 9, 2002 More fun with grenades Yesterday, Frogblast posted a series of movies chronicling his experiments with the Blue Beams of Death on the level Halo (the series will show up on the Tricks page soon)... not long after, Dark Helmet sent in a new movie to iBonk.com, showing what happens when you Warthog-Jump into one of the blue beams. That hog's... GONE! Whoa.(Louis Wu 08:53:13 UTC) (permalink) April 5, 2002 Three guns in Halo - Confirmed! Heh - it's not every day that fans find out something that BUNGIE didn't know... three weeks ago, Matt Soell created the Rumor Control Database in an effort to debunk the most common (false) rumors concerning Halo that have been circulating the internet. One of the most persistent has been "If you beat the game on Normal, then on Legendary, all in 3 hours, you'll get a third weapon." Matt's response? "Nope. You'll always have a two-weapon limit." Heh - today, Reckless Angel posted a note to our forum stating that this was not true... and 12 hours and 8 minutes later, Frogblast posted video proof of his claim. Turns out it's a timing issue, and getting that third weapon depends on beating a timed checkpoint... but apparently, it's not so tough to beat. The fans of this game continue to amaze me. (In all fairness, this glitch will turn up on no other level, because there is nowhere else that you start with no weapons. However, you CAN play an entire level of Halo - 10% of the game - with three weapons instead of two... and that's just plain cool.)(Louis Wu 21:24:43 UTC) (permalink) April 4, 2002 Massive Gameplay Tricks update Yes, it took FOREVER - but the Gameplay Tricks queue is CLEARED! There are 10 new entries, almost all from new tricksters - the collection is seriously eclectic. 8 new tricksters, 9 maps covered... explore. Highlights for me included the cool teleporting marines glitch on Silent Cartographer and the gorgeous vistas found above the waterfall on Halo... but it's all good. Go check it out! (One-Shots should be coming in the next few days... if all goes well.) March 31, 2002 A website worth exploring Daniel writes to say that Team 7hr33's website has had a major overhaul - new layout (I like), TONS of new content (much of which I will eventually steal for inclusion here), and one disappointment - a movie, posted yesterday (and filmed on March 11) shows Team 7hr33's exploration of the 'Black Door' on Two Betrayals, mentioned in the recent Gameplay Trick uploaded by Frogblast. (It STILL doesn't predate Legolas' documentation in our forum... but it is the first video showing the door.) Go visit - check out the Maw vids, the frontwards 360 in a Scorpion, and the very slick plasma pistol/grenade combo trick... and everything else around there. These guys have S7yle, with a capital S.(Louis Wu 03:54:00 UTC) (permalink) March 29, 2002 Movies are fun ShdwPnthr points out a pair of movies he's made - one shows the carnage you can wreak with the chaingun on the Warthog (I'd have done a bit more driving damage before getting in the back; you suffer less personal damage that way, but the wreckage is undeniably vast in any case), and the second shows a pretty slick start to the Maw Run. They're in QT5 format, and weigh in at 1.5 mb and 900k, respectively. Check 'em out!(Louis Wu 13:23:40 UTC) (permalink) March 28, 2002 Man, that guy needs help Barnolde caught a Covenant Dropship pilot drinking on the job... check it out in our Gameplay Tricks section.(Louis Wu 22:34:42 UTC) (permalink) March 26, 2002 Keep your butt alive Having trouble dealing with huge quantities of Flood on the higher difficulty settings? protexts suggests trying 'Bait, Retreat, Attack' in this forum post. (Yes, once there's a Gameplay Tips section, this'll go there.)(Louis Wu 09:42:05 UTC) (permalink) March 25, 2002 Just give him a dev kit, wouldja? Whoa.(Louis Wu 13:35:18 UTC) (permalink) March 23, 2002 On Top of SC... in 3D Bonk has put up a very nice little QuickTime VR movie (200k) of the top of Silent Cartographer... makes me want to build a house up there. (I wonder how much that island land is going for...?)(Louis Wu 18:06:07 UTC) (permalink) March 21, 2002 Maybe it should have been 'donut' The Halo plot hole defined by this quote from Truth and Reconciliation: While the Covenant had us locked up in here, I overheard the guards talking about this ring world. They call it... "Halo." has been discussed extensively on our forum. (Why could Keyes understand what the guards were saying when the super-duper translator in our own suit can't even do that?) However, Master Chief IV used this line to ask an even better question - why, if Keyes is just now learning what the Covenant call this ring, does the screen behind him on the bridge of the Pillar of Autumn ALSO call it 'Halo'? (Yes, it's just a game. Bungie makes few enough mistakes like this, though, that it's worth pointing them out when they DO happen.)(Louis Wu 10:39:02 UTC) (permalink) March 20, 2002 Come down here, you! Drunken Elite? TitaniumPez found a pretty bizarre looping Banshee on Halo... nice perfect circles, but he doesn't seem to notice the player. Hmm...(Louis Wu 17:51:01 UTC) (permalink) March 19, 2002 More Tricks, but no answers pete_the_duck has gone a to a couple of places not yet documented - one on Halo, the other on Truth and Reconciliation. You can check his website for pictures from the locations... but as of right now, he's not willing to share his techniques for reaching them, so don't ask us. :) Update: he's explained... and reproducing this one ain't gonna be easy...(Louis Wu 02:08:20 UTC) (permalink) March 18, 2002 EOF vid finds a home Back in late February, customsex sent word that Eleet Ops Faction had a new video for the masses - it showed how to get down from the beginning of the Maw (a subject which was pretty hot at that moment), and a bug in Two Betrayals in which the death of one co-op player meant the death of the other. It was rather large, however - 31 megs - so I told him that we couldn't host it, and that since it showed one subject he'd already covered in another vid (albeit without the music) and another subject that could be done in many, many fewer bytes, that finding a host might be a problem. Well, thanks to Vector40, that host has been found - The Repertory has put the movie up, and you can grab it from there. The Two Betrayals bug is pretty hilarious... and there's plenty of playing with dead bodies. Again, it's a 31 mb MPG, almost 2 minutes long. Check it out!(Louis Wu 13:24:01 UTC) (permalink) March 16, 2002 Infinite ammo exploit Short on ammo? Got a big gun, but don't know what to use your limited shots on? brad has discovered a pretty cool exploit - in a coop game, if one player is reloading at the time that the other player passes a checkpoint, the gun that is being reloaded will have infinite ammo. Don't manually reload, or switch guns, or the glitch is lost... but as long as you keep that one gun up, and don't hit 'x' (which means no vehicles, either), you've got as much ammo as you can fire! Very nice.(Louis Wu 02:36:57 UTC) (permalink) March 15, 2002 Bugs are fun More fun with frozen stuff - Bonk has an interesting movie showing what happens when a Banshee crosses a loading zone without you... and Frogblast discovers a CLOSED (but flyable) Banshee. Wonga!(Louis Wu 14:26:31 UTC) (permalink) March 14, 2002 Bridge of Bodies now in video form Yesterday, we posted a cool Gameplay Trick that uses the 'force field' around the tops of trees to create a bridge of bodies. Frogblast had made a movie, as well as the still shots we showed you... but his server was having some trouble. The server's fixed, and the movie has been posted. Check it out!(Louis Wu 17:30:01 UTC) (permalink) March 13, 2002 Pushing the limits - again Four new inclusions for our Gameplay Tricks page - some pretty cool stuff. Frogblast/Metafire does some serious Library exploration, brad discovers a bizarre little bug related to spawning, and Gabe Harris shows us how to build body bridges. (Oh, man, what people are gonna do with that...) Check 'em all out!(Louis Wu 22:26:50 UTC) (permalink) March 13, 2002 The Egg Page grows Three months ago, it was discovered that a piece of music written for the Bungie game Myth could be heard from a difficult-to-get-to spot at the end of Assault on the Control Room. Recently, it was learned that the same piece of music could be found in another, also-difficult-to-get-to spot at the start of the same level. We've added this information (including video documentation) to the Easter Eggs page. Interestingly enough, that particular piece of music, in sheet form, showed up on the Bungie webcam almost a year ago - does this mean we can date the inclusion of this particular pair of eggs?(Louis Wu 17:21:54 UTC) (permalink) March 13, 2002 More messing around with Frozen Marines Not long ago, we added an interesting One-Shot from Bonk, showing a rather unusual pose for a marine. Recently, he's added an article to his site, iBonk.com, showing the full experiment - this is another example of the Frozen Stuff bug, but there's a movie, and a step-by-step reproduction guide. Check it out!(Louis Wu 15:27:18 UTC) (permalink) March 8, 2002 How'd those get there? Slayer31 sends in some new pics of Sidewinder, with everything - jeeps, ghosts, and tanks - off the map. That's a first, as far as I can tell... we've added it to our Gameplay Tricks section.(Louis Wu 14:54:25 UTC) (permalink) March 8, 2002 Marathon-logoed object... found? ElectricSheep thought he had it - the mystery image with the Marathon logo was, in his opinion, Captain Keyes' pipe. Preliminary investigation suggested this might be the case... but the context was all wrong. (The blue stuff around the object is nowhere to be seen in the first level.) Dave Candland confirmed that we had NOT, in fact, found the image... but folks weren't ready to give up. AmechWarrior suggested that maybe it was near the Keyes flood creature... and Strykerwolf confirmed that it was there. We have no pictures, however - hopefully, they're coming soon. Congrats to all involved!(Louis Wu 14:13:28 UTC) (permalink) March 7, 2002 The Hippo Egg finally has a home Some may wonder why the largest hunt since the Glyph puzzle went uncommented-on by the maintainer of this site... chalk it up to vacation. :( Two weeks ago, our forum was inundated with wild speculation about hippos, and their potential representations in various parts of Halo. Finally, on February 21, Frogblast found a REAL hippo - drawn in loving detail on the outside of the shotgun shell. Matt Soell, the instigator of the Hippo search, was kind enough to send along (first to Battleground: Halo, and then to us) a hi-res version of the shell artwork - we've added it to the Easter Eggs page, for posterity. Congratulations to Frogblast... and a happy hippo hello to Matt, whose obsession was so enthusiastically picked up by the HBO Forum denizens.(Louis Wu 21:39:08 UTC) (permalink) March 7, 2002 A new challenge Regarding the new images posted at Tru7h and Reconciliation yesterday - Dave Candland has thrown down the gauntlet, with respect to this picture:
Will it be you that finds it? Where will you look? The race is on!(Louis Wu 18:38:23 UTC) (permalink) March 7, 2002 Maw Antics Three new entries for the Frogblast Tricks page... erm, the Gameplay Tricks page - all three are on the Maw. See how far you can push Halo - where can you go? This is some amazing stuff...(Louis Wu 17:01:18 UTC) (permalink) March 7, 2002 Stuck behind the Warthog Bonk sent in another One-Shot - this time, it wasn't even him. Some hunters came along and stacked up a pair of marines, one on top of another, on Silent Cartographer... there they were, just minding their own business, and the big bully Hunter decided one would look better standing on the other's head. The question is... can you make THREE of 'em stacked?(Louis Wu 01:55:30 UTC) (permalink) March 5, 2002 Ender's Game? Nah... Okay, okay... we done get bamboozled. Not even on purpose. The literary goose chase Marty O'Donnell sort of sent us on was just that - a goose chase... he didn't even mean for so many people to see it. It was a joke, and I (among others) got took. Gotta be more careful...(Louis Wu 02:27:03 UTC) (permalink) March 4, 2002 Literary sources revealed Hmm... Marty knows how to spill those beans... From the Question and Answer database of the Marty's Army fanclub at the Seventh Column: Q What are the meanings/histories behind all the names in Halo? 343 Guilty Spark? Pillar of Autumn? Truth & Reconciliation? Looks like I'm gonna have to go back and read Ender's Game again... and where's my Shakespeare collection? Thanks to mnemesis for the heads-up on this one.(Louis Wu 21:03:11 UTC) (permalink) March 4, 2002 Things you just shouldn't be able to do Three new tricks from Frogblast - all from Assault on the Control Room. He's placed Warthogs just about everywhere on the level a human can go... and he and Mr. Pinchy showed how to swap Banshees in midair. Whoa. Check 'em out in our Gameplay Tricks section.(Louis Wu 18:10:04 UTC) (permalink) March 2, 2002 That's not blood, it's dirt Gameplay weirdness: NthDegree256 was playing through the Maw, and when he blasted the engine vents, he saw what looked like a huge gout of red blood bursting from the opening. Ferrex stepped in to explain what was happening: This is a "feature" that was discovered a little too late to be documented. What you're actually seeing isn't blood... it's dirt. Red dirt. That particular effect does some sort of sampling of the texture color at the point where it originates from... that way, you get yellow sand spray when it hits sand, or brown dirt when it hits dirt. I haven't seen this personally yet, but apparently, it's dependent on where you hit the vent. However, it's very nice to have an explanation... I'm sure it'll come up again!(Louis Wu 10:49:27 UTC) (permalink) February 27, 2002 Things most sane people wouldn't try Three more cool feats for you - from two of the most productive teams around. Metafire (with able direction from Legolas) gets down to the bottom of the second Shaft on Silent Cartographer; Eleet Ops Faction rides a pelican to its final resting place, and Metafire (again) surfs a sentinel outside the crashed Pillar of Autumn. Check 'em out in our Gameplay Tricks section!(Louis Wu 03:26:22 UTC) (permalink) February 20, 2002 Can the women and children please go now? And the fan fiction continues to flow... New author Ian Barnes sends in Operation False Prophets: AI Constructs and Cyborgs First, Again, taking place immediately after the game.(Count Zero 05:00:21 UTC) (permalink) February 19, 2002 Secrets abound Legolas has created a guide to virtually every known secret in Halo (and some I didn't know about myself). It's posted at GameFAQs' Halo section.(Count Zero 20:30:43 UTC) (permalink) February 17, 2002 Where's Hamish when you need him? The Halo Story Page has been slowing down a bit lately... Word from the management is that they are understaffed and overworked, so they have put out the call for additional hands. If you have some spare time and you know and love Halo's story, head over to this post and drop them a line.(Count Zero 20:12:03 UTC) (permalink) February 16, 2002 The loudest music video yet Another mirror for Siva(W'rk)'s movie with the really long name has appeared, on the Subnova Satellite. I'll set up a page to gather the mirrors soon(tm).(Count Zero 04:20:03 UTC) (permalink) February 15, 2002 The antidote to the Halo Boy Band There's yet another HMV in town: Siva (W'rk) has made a fast and furious video named "How I Learned to Stop Playing and Love the Halo", set to the heavy sounds of Napalm Death's "Incendiary Incoming". Mirrors have sprung up here (thanks to Mr. Zarquon) and here (thanks to the Psyjnir Complex). (I'd been holding off on posting this one until I could verify that one of the mirrors worked, but now that there are several up it's become a moot point.)(Count Zero 19:34:15 UTC) (permalink) February 13, 2002 Standing on the shoulders of giants... Frogblast, aka Metafire, in his continuing quest to go where no man has gone before, has touched the face of God. Wait... no, that's not right - he's touched the ceiling of the Truth and Reconciliation... from the inside of Keyes. (No, it's not the same. Yes, it's pretty cool anyway.) Check out the details in our Gameplay Tricks section!(Louis Wu 17:58:56 UTC) (permalink) February 13, 2002 Ring configuration diagram updated Confused about where you stand on Halo? poena.dare #CP#g created an updated version of his Ring Configuration graphic (originally posted here, a week ago), giving you some sense of perspective for the size of the ring, and your position on it. (The 300 km value at the bottom was chosen because that's how far Cortana tells you the Truth and Reconciliation is from you at the end of the level Halo - it's just used to handle the thickness details.) Incidentally, the first post, while having a now-outdated ring config diagram, also has a handy-dandy flowchart showing your travel through the various levels - this can be pretty helpful in deciphering where you are. Nice work!(Louis Wu 13:51:58 UTC) (permalink) February 13, 2002 The top of Keyes falls Nemesis_007 posted a detailed description explaining how to get to the top of Keyes... and Frogblast took him up on it and got up there, taking pictures all the way. Together, they bring you a pictoral record of the first melee attack on the Truth and Reconciliation (from the outside, anyway). The Gameplay Tricks section shows all.(Louis Wu 02:52:06 UTC) (permalink) February 12, 2002 Alternate route to the waterfall VoOdOo created a movie (under 5 mb, .avi format) showing how to get the Warthog back to the waterfall in Halo without getting on top of the level. Takes a few grenades, and a chunk of your health... but you'll probably be doing this after everything's already dead, so don't worry too much.(Louis Wu 10:21:40 UTC) (permalink) February 12, 2002 Gameplay Tricks updated with Sidewinder Sneak We've added Nemesis_007's Sidewinder Sneak exploit to our Gameplay Tricks page - use this trick, and your multiplayer opponents won't know what hit 'em! (As several forumgoers pointed out, this is a general glitch in the Halo physics engine, and can be exploited on several other levels... but none with such dramatic results in a multiplayer game.)(Louis Wu 01:49:03 UTC) (permalink) February 11, 2002 Yes, it's real, Virginia... Beam Timing Mystery - SOLVED! Jaime Griesemer (aka Flawless Cowboy, Halo level designer) stopped by our forum to explain why there seemed to be a link between the beam timing and motion freeze in areas of Halo you were never supposed to get to in the first place. Toward the end of the game's development cycle you try to fix problems that arise in ways that will have the least impact, so you don't end up creating more bugs than you fix. It looks like a late change in the vehicle physics for the Warthog, a poorly timed save point (that could trigger just before you were killed, creating an infinite cycle of death) a convenient beam-triggering looping script and a very quick fix have come together and created a brand new online multiplayer game for crazy forum posters. His post goes on to explain some of the other oddities exploited by Halo fanatics, including the invincible marines on the PoA bridge, and the ability to get into the Shaft. Check it out!(Louis Wu 19:11:49 UTC) (permalink) February 11, 2002 Dang... what ARE those beams? Frogblast, a frequent contributor to the Gameplay Tricks section, discovered something pretty intriguing - there's a link between the blue energy beams that mysteriously fire on the level Halo, and your ability to move around on the top of the level. (The why is completely unknown, and might be something worth discussing on the Halo Story page... but the how has never been noticed before, and can be very useful to Halo Explorers.) It's been known for some time that climbing above certain areas in Halo will eventually lead to an inability to move - but one thing Frogblast discovered is that there are 'freeze zones' that will hold you captive... if you're in them when those beams fire. Check the latest entry to the Gameplay Tricks section for a passel of pictures and a movie, showing the effect.(Louis Wu 02:47:13 UTC) (permalink) February 11, 2002 Standing Jeep Room Only Bat 21 and Longstreet also took a Warthog to the Map Room on Silent Cartographer... but when they got there, they played around a bit. Check it out in the Gameplay Tricks section. (The first image throws me a little... are there two jeeps there?)(Louis Wu 00:38:04 UTC) (permalink) February 10, 2002 Sidewinder Sneak Major multiplayer tip for Sidewinder: This was discovered (apparently by accident) by Nemesis_007 - but I've made a film of it, to prove it actually works. :) If you strafe sideways in a Ghost towards the grate where the invisibility and shield powerups are sitting, a well-timed dismount will actually get you pushed THROUGH the grate by the still-sliding vehicle. (Nemesis_007 says it works with the Warthog, as well, but it's harder to time right.) Jump too early, you'll get crushed like a bug. Jump too late, and you'll exit the wrong side of the Ghost. Time it perfectly, though... and through you go. What's more, the Ghost sits there, next to the grating... if you walk up to it (from the other side of the grate, mind you), you'll get the 'Press X to enter Ghost' message, and pressing X will cause you to magically pass through the grate. CTF in Sidewinder just became a whole new ballgame. If you want to see this in action (and have QuickTime 5 installed on your computer), grab this short movie (750k), showing the pass-through in action (in both directions). Yowsers.(Louis Wu 01:22:29 UTC) (permalink) February 9, 2002 Knuckle abrasions, definitely Merciless turned in a set of pics showing the progression of a jeep down below the Silent Cartographer level, to the map room itself. No, it's not the first time it's been done... but it's the first time it's been documented like this. (The images aren't great, but you can tell what's going on.) Check it out in our Gameplay Tricks section!(Louis Wu 11:52:14 UTC) (permalink) February 7, 2002 Out of Halo - completely Another first - Getting completely OFF the map on the level Halo. Folks have gotten to the tops of the mountains in the Reunion Tour section (and even ALMOST to the top in the Flawless Cowboy section, though the jeep loses power before you peak, and drops back down)... but nobody's documented getting OFF the map (into totally untextured areas) until now. Check out the pics in our Gameplay Tricks section.(Louis Wu 14:54:33 UTC) (permalink) February 6, 2002 Flying tanks... who'da thunk it? R.G.'s Warthog Jump movie, showing the stockpiling of large numbers of explosive devices and their potential effect on heavy equipment, has inspired other Halo engineers. TitaniumPez has taken a few pictures showing how to bring the Scorpion, previously useless once you reach the pillars after the ice area of Assault on the Control Room, just a bit farther. Check the details (and TP's plea) in our Gameplay Tricks section!(Louis Wu 20:37:37 UTC) (permalink) February 5, 2002 Beating the scripts Hmm... this is interesting. If you've ever headed back to the start of Silent Cartographer after activating the Cartographer (that is, rather than getting into the dropship that would end the level), you'll find that all the Marines you'd left near the start were dead. (Presumably, they were slaughtered by random Covs you managed to miss along the way.) Apparently, though, this is a scripted outcome, one you have no control over; Chez Wiz reports that
That's sort of disappointing... don't you wish you could save the poor buggers? I wonder what would happen if you forced them down into the interior of SC, then got them out of the jeep and blocked their return with the jeep itself? Would they STILL die? Will anyone find out?(Louis Wu 09:32:14 UTC) (permalink) February 3, 2002 4 new Tricks collections Metafire, aka Frogblast on our forum, has given us permission to mirror some of the tricks found on his Exploration pages. We've added four new collections to our Gameplay Tricks section - an illustration of a climbing route up Silent Cartographer (not requiring explosives), a route out of Truth and Reconciliation, and a pair of Assault narratives. Check 'em out on the Gameplay Tricks page!(Louis Wu 22:54:56 UTC) (permalink) February 2, 2002 Hey! You can ride it! Whoa. Metafire managed to get into the second Pelican on Assault on the Control Room (the one that flies over the bridge) - and he took some pics. Oops - guess Bungie should have renumbered one of those...(Louis Wu 22:08:57 UTC) (permalink) February 2, 2002 More vehicle collecting Aaron Suhr stops by our forum to point out that he's upped his 'ultimate vehicle collection' by several - he's added another 7 shades, and one more ghost (albeit a broken one). There's a new movie which shows off the collection better. The time this guy has... we've updated his Gameplay Tricks page with the new info. (This info is also available on Aaron's mac.com page.)(Louis Wu 21:12:53 UTC) (permalink) February 2, 2002 Assault first bridge trick, filmed Doum and Pat, a pair of Halo fanatics from Quebec, have made a series of movies to show how to get down to the bottom off the first bridge of Assault on the Control Room - it requires some tricky timing in coop mode. The films were encoded with DivX 4 - I found that they were viewable on a Mac with the newest DivX decoder (the Windows decoder has never been a problem). Quality is somewhat low (it was filmed off a TV screen), but you can certainly see what you need to be doing. Movies are hosted on Doum's server.
Using this trick, you avoid triggering any baddies - you'll be traveling through a totally unpopulated level. You'll need to use the Banshee on the ground to head back up to the bridge, since the door at the bottom is locked. Nice job, guys!(Louis Wu 11:00:09 UTC) (permalink) January 30, 2002 The tricks keep coming Two more submissions for the Gameplay Tricks page - Cal drops off a passel of pics showing the tippety-top of Damnation... and Phear X shows you how to get on top of the base beacon pole (which stands on top of the base) on Sidewinder. What folks won't try...(Louis Wu 17:21:30 UTC) (permalink) January 30, 2002 First up... then down Dueling Cartographers! Two different collections have been added to the Gameplay Tricks section - Team 7HR33 submits a movie showing a beautiful dismount from the top of Silent Cartographer... and Randy Glass gives us a cookbook movie that will have you driving the heights in no time. (Randy's page contains multiple mirrors for his film - thanks once again to the Psyjnir Complex for their hotline hosting!) If the submission rate ever slows down, I'll even get around to making the page more navigable! Followup: Randy has posted a pretty hilarious bloopers film (1:25, 4.8 MB), showing a bunch of the times it DIDN'T work... the last one had me in tears. (Where'd it go?)(Louis Wu 06:58:40 UTC) (permalink) January 29, 2002 Sniping from the Tower... Metafire has taken a series of pretty pictures of a curious rock formation high on the wall of Blood Gulch... and put them together to show another way up and out of Blood Gulch. (These were originally mentioned on our forum, and are being hosted here with permission.) Check 'em out on our Gameplay Tricks page!(Louis Wu 02:45:28 UTC) (permalink) January 28, 2002 There's blood on them thar walls! Well, kiss mah grits - another easter egg has surfaced. Space Cowboy has discovered some graffiti left on the Maw by Ferrex, one of Halo's level designers. Now what I want to know is... did he make it to the Longsword after finding this? Check out all the details on our Easter Eggs page.(Louis Wu 06:14:14 UTC) (permalink) January 26, 2002 Get a Banshee... fast Another Gameplay Tip - it's common knowledge that the pair of Banshees on the natural bridge on the Assault on the Control Room level are worth grabbing... but now you have access to a short video showing you what is probably the fastest CONSISTENT way of doing so. (Yes, you can run out there and grab it under the noses of the Elites... but every once in a while, you'll be outrun, and boom, down you go.) Mark Levin has created a Banshee Boost video - check it out on the Gameplay Tricks page of our Tips and Tricks section.(Louis Wu 17:02:38 UTC) (permalink) January 22, 2002 Video Banshee Tutorial posted Mark Levin has created a 7 MB, 90 second video showing multiple locations for shooting down that first Banshee on Assault on the Control Room - getting hold of this will allow you to explore the level without having to deal with any enemies. Check it out in our Tips and Tricks section. Nice work!(Louis Wu 18:05:18 UTC) (permalink) January 21, 2002 Banshee tutorial posted At the end of December, Enzyver posted a series of pictures showing how to collect the first Banshee on Assault in the Control room. Well... they've now been submitted here, and added to our Gameplay Tricks section. (I've reduced the images to fit a more common browser size, but if anyone wants the original images, they're linked from the individual pages (along with sizes).) Once again, apologies for the backlog - there's only one of me doing this stuff right now!(Louis Wu 04:25:19 UTC) (permalink) January 18, 2002 Ooh, ick. If you thought our speculation about the origins of the Carrier Form of the Flood were a bit off the wall, wait until you check the updated Flood Mechanics page - the REAL info is considerably stranger.(Louis Wu 02:32:29 UTC) (permalink) January 17, 2002 They're creepy and they're kooky... Curious about the Flood? Wondering what it is you've been shooting so much of? Thanks to the above-and-beyond help of Dave Candland, we're able to bring you Flood Mechanics, a section devoted to the inner workings of the Halo's most corrupted life forms. Obviously, this is chock-full of spoilers... but you wouldn't even be reading this if you had spoilers turned off, so go to it!(Louis Wu 20:43:34 UTC) (permalink) January 7, 2002 Climbing the old-fashioned way As though called by the upcoming new 'Tips and Tricks' section, Ben Kane has updated his collection of odd places in Halo, including easy-to-follow visual directions for getting to the top of 343 Guilty Spark without jumping on the dropship. More to come, it seems... but start here!(Louis Wu 09:12:16 UTC) (permalink) January 4, 2002 On top of old smokey... Ben Kane and Greg Mouland have managed to get on top of Truth and Reconciliation... not much up there. You can find pics at Ben's Geocities site. They're still working on new stuff! (Oh, and for folks having trouble getting on top of the Dropship to jump to the top of 343 Guilty Spark - Ben writes that they did it a different way; they jumped off a rock. No grenades/partner boosting needed. Maybe they'll put together a pictorial showing WHICH rock. :) )(Louis Wu 19:11:59 UTC) (permalink) January 3, 2002 Going where no man is supposed to go Ben Kane and Greg Mouland have managed to take the first pics atop the cliff on 343 Guilty Spark (the one you can get to by jumping on top of the initial dropship, then jumping across as it leaves), and have also taken some nice shots atop the Silent Cartographer level. You can find these pics on Ben's Geocities site. (Hopefully, by this time next week, we'll have a home for this sort of thing, for those interested in contributing.)(Louis Wu 10:22:31 UTC) (permalink) January 3, 2002 Legendary Ending Scene filmed We shouldn't even be telling you this... but hell, he made the films. If you haven't yet beaten Halo on Legendary, but you're still anxious to see the special cutscene at the end, John Kramlich has made it possible; the critical part is available on his site, in both Sorensen 3 and MPEG 1 formats. If you watch these without earning them, though, you should be ashamed of yourself.(Louis Wu 10:08:44 UTC) (permalink) December 31, 2001 Fun with the Flood How many places can you shoot a flood and knock parts off? Some thought it was just the arms and head... but Skeletor points out that the abdomen is another piece. (In fact, he took a picture.) We've made it local, to avoid loading problems with Geocities images...(Louis Wu 18:20:53 UTC) (permalink) December 24, 2001 Library comments transcribed Skeletor has transcribed all (?) of 343 Guilty Spark's dialog on the Library level, and posted it (nicely organized) on our forum. Worth a read, for those who may have missed some of the tidbits while trying to simply stay alive... (Now where's that Story site?)(Louis Wu 15:53:47 UTC) (permalink) December 23, 2001 Flood puppies are fun A couple of days ago, Skeletor discovered that if you shoot the arms off a flood-infected fighter (covenant or human), they'll simply follow you around like puppies. (Ugly puppies... but harmless.) Well... he's taken it one step further now - read about it here, then look at the pictures here. Merry Christmas.(Louis Wu 15:36:59 UTC) (permalink) December 16, 2001 Now THAT makes sense. Hot damn - finally, a theory you can sink your teeth into! Thaumaturge suggests that the Halo was built by... humans. I'm not gonna steal his thunder, so go and read the whole shebang - it smacks of Bungie goodness, right out of the gate. Now, where's that dang Story site?(Louis Wu 03:03:23 UTC) (permalink) December 9, 2001 Plot wars at Bungie Feeling a little depressed at the end of Halo? Looks like Bungie did its job right - you cared about your Marine buddies. A thread on our forum about the weight of fighting completely without human help in the second half of the game elicited this response from Marty O'Donnell:
Marty - if wanting to save just a single human makes you a Pollyanna, I'm with you. Leave the depressing stuff to Darth Staten.(Louis Wu 13:44:19 UTC) (permalink) December 7, 2001 How consistent IS Bungie? Knight Premier writes to suggest that there's a clear relationship between the 7th Column logo and 343 Guilty Spark, a character from Halo. (As well, of course, as the obvious relationship between Sparky and the Marathon logo...) You make up your own mind. (He's modified the 7th Column logo a bit, to help you out.)  (Louis Wu 17:10:46 UTC) (permalink) December 7, 2001 The problem with flash-cloning Fall of Reach details... Eric Trautmann drops an interesting tidbit into the Marathon's Story page forum - there's been some discussion, on and off, about the outrage felt towards Dr. Halsey, and her involvement in the 'recruitment' of children for the SPARTAN project. The moral offense of replacing a child with a flash-clone (so that the parents wouldn't know he or she was gone) seemed (to me, at least) to be less relevant in the 26th century... but Eric's explanation of the left-out backstory clarifies things a lot:
Had that been included, the moral outrage would have been COMPLETELY justified... one more example of how cutting-room floor material can make hard-to-understand plot points clearer. Thanks, Eric!(Louis Wu 14:19:37 UTC) (permalink) November 28, 2001 Story conjecture... FriendlyFire writes about some of the issues brought up in our recent Halo Review, specifically the storyline. I'm going to break with tradition, and quote a boatload of his note, because it's pretty intriguing stuff:
Good stuff... comments are always welcome. Once again, it looks like it's time for a Halo Story section (either forum or moderated pages)...(Louis Wu 16:52:36 UTC) (permalink) November 21, 2001 What level got YOU the most? Deco drops a note on our forum about the poetry in 343 Guilty Spark - and upon reflection, I'd have to agree with him that the hectic feel of the level was pervasive; I never felt like I got a break. (In fact, I got fatigued near the end; I really WANTED a breather. :) ) The Flood, though easy to kill, were used to their best advantage on this level - they showed up in tight corridors, they showed up in dark corners. Though there were more of them on the Library level, I felt as though the fear factor was higher on 343 Guilty Spark... and it seems Deco feels that way too. If you have a special level where you were most frightened, or in some other way impressed, add it to his thread!(Louis Wu 21:51:16 UTC) (permalink) |
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