Chronique:BWU 09/12/2005

Posted by Frankie at 12/9/2005 5:28 PM PST

Bungie Weekly Update: December 9, 2005

Short and sweet, with a fond farewell and a bitter hello, not much new to report, but you insist on reading anyway. Lost fans will love or hate the new Mister Chief too. Don't say you weren't warned.

The movie business is a strange and frightening place. Usually, we hear about stuff the same time you do. For example, last week, the Hollywood scuttlebutt was that Hellboy director, Guillermo Del Toro was in talks with Peter Jackson to direct the Halo movie.

But I can tell you that we have NOT signed a director as of 5pm this evening, and are still, in Variety parlance, " Halo Hawks Hunting Helmer, Hobbit Prexy Preps Prod. "

Personally, I love Del Toro, but I honestly don't know any more than you guys. Joe Staten just shrugged and said " Guillermo " would be a good name for his about-to-be due baby, but largely because it is a ow-do-you-say? Ah yes! de-sexy name, not because of the Director rumor. And I would like to take this opportunity to posit MY personal picks for the Halo cast:

• Chief: Karl Urban
• Cortana: Salma Hayek (JUST for the costume)
• Sgt. Johnson: David Scully
• 343 Guilty Spark: David Hyde Pierce
• All the Grunts: WeeMan (just like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
• Captain Keyes: Sean Connery
• All of the Elites: Bob Sapp
• The Flood: Paris Hilton, Ashlee Simpson, Hilary Duff, Meatloaf Aday as Carrier Form.

And in OTHER baby news, Sketch HAD one! A beautiful baby girl. Congrats to mom too!

I gets me a lot of hate mail, almost all of it is some anti-baldness rhetoric, followed by a weak death threat, so to those guys, let me just say this: The bald gene is dominant. Thanks to Sean Connery and Bruce Willis, baldies can now breed with impunity. That means that the highly advanced breed of future-menz, will all be bald. And probably wear crazy headgear like Lobo from The Empire Strikes Back . Victory will be ours. Enjoy your shampoos and barbiferous unguents while you can.

The new playlists have been accepted and rejected with predictable levels of hate and love. One unexpected treat was a mail from an MLG luminary, saying he LOVED Team Actionsack, and that it was a nice way to "decompress" after Team Hardcore. Chasing an invisible, fast moving ball carrier through a nightmare of Brute Shot explosions is hardly my idea of decompression, but to each his own.

One surprising batch of emails concerns the ranking of Team Snipers. Lots and lots of folks have complained that having their existing, previously invisible Team Sniper level become their ranked level is "BS." The major complaint, and I am not kidding, is from people who were "only going in there to own on noobz and now I am matched against people who are the same or better and that is total BS man." Um, seriously. What? If you don't like it, play against your niece.

The LEGITIMATE complaint about Team Snipers is that now it's much more competitive and less "friendly" for soft, spongy players like me, but I enjoyed it so much in the past I can at least add a few kills to my team's total, no matter who I get matched with. AND I get my fair share of sniper matches in Rumble Armory, which is nice.

A few folks who played Halo 2 on their 360 last night also won a booby prize – black bars on the side of the screen in 16:9 mode. This was part of a cool backward compatibility update that let you, among other things, play a bunch of cool games like Splinter Cell and Ghost Recon on 360. Sadly it had one drawback for Halo 2 players. It affected a very small number of people, but they're pissed, and I can reveal that it will be fixed very, very soon. Probably even by the time you read this.

This update to the update should fix the black bars.
The Bungie Princess just bought a house in Bungie Gulch (a location in Seattle where about half of Bungie lives) and she's getting new kitchen cabinets.

Who is Kuniklo? Our mysterious new forum assassin is a Bungie employee. And has caused quite a stir on the forums. Some have speculated that Kuniklo may not be a dude. Our official response? We are not ready to discuss the Kuniklo project at this time.

Jeremiah is leaving us! Shishka is coming back! It's like The question is, who is better, Shishka or Ninja on Fire? I will let you guys vote in the thread following this article. But here's Jeremiah's fond farewell: All good things must come to an end, and so after having the wonderful opportunity of once again working with the Bungie Team and all of our community, I am off to embark on new and glorious conquests. PS., note that he gives props to one of the few groups composed of hotties. Such a playa.

From Jeremiah (Ninja on Fire)

I'd like to thank everyone in the community, it's been a pleasure working with you and I wish you all the best. I especially want to say thanks to everyone who has participated in the Optimatch forum over the past year, Halo 2 Matchmaking wouldn't be the same without all of the productive discussions we have had. Whether you're a fan of Team Hardcore or Team ActionSack, we all have one thing in common, we all love Halo 2!

I'm sure there are some of you out there that dislike me, due to various changes to matchmaking or things I have said that you disagree with. I just want to say to you guys specifically, cry more newblets! Just because we don't do everything the way you think it should be done, doesn't mean there's something wrong with it.

Oh and props go out to the Cavegirls! You're a kickass group and a credit to our community, I <heart> you all.

That is all,

Ninja vanish!

Thanks Jeremiah, you rock!

We're busy working on a bunch of IP products right now. Some tedious, some exciting. One, a big secret that we've kept for ages, is nearing some kind of completion. Remember conspiracy fans, IPs are things like posters, soundtracks, novels etc. More on that stuff later. And none of them have anything to do with our next project. They are all Halo 2 related, in fact. We did look at some new Prophet head molds this week, for possible new Prophet action figures. STILL no update on the Vol. 2 Soundtrack other than to say, sheesh, it's still coming.

Finally, some guy asked if I could do Mister Chief as Hurley from Lost. Crimeny. Since Hurley is by far my favorite Lostee, I agreed.