Chronique:WWU 13/05/2005

Posted by Frankie at 5/13/2005 4:17 PM PDT

Short and sour this week as the harsh realities of (very minor) bad news are not helped at all by the horrible Mister Chief/insult to the best animator ever. Some snippets on E3, 360 and more. Save your hate mail. I will assume that you sent me an enraged missive and save us both some time.

All of a sudden people are asking,

I just went to my favorite game retail site, and they claim that the game is going to release on July 5th. I thought it was coming out a week before that?

It was. But now it's not. Slight delay while we make it marginally more awesome. July 5th is the new date. Which is pretty convenient since it lets you play during your Fourth of July hangover.

FestFans ask,

Is Bungie gonna be at E3?

Sorta. Sketch is going down, dressed as a booth babe no doubt, and he'll be on hand to help folks play through the five remaining maps. That will be the first chance folks will have to play them outside of these offices, so it should be fun. Also, Sketch will be quite the social butterfly, attending a legendary SoCal LAN party and having the BEST SALSA EVER MADE. Deanero, get your Taco guy to send some back with Sketch. I am begging you.

Many, many people ask,

When are you going to change the rules on Slayer so that jerks get penalized for suicides? I'm sick of losing because an idiot or a team got one kill and then killed themselves over and over again to prevent me from winning?

Yesterday. We adjusted the rules so that they lose. It happened to me today in fact, and it was hilarious as the guy took like seven suicides before he realized they were counting against him. I mean really, if you can't win, or play the game fairly, maybe it's just not the game for you. And here's a funny thing – I get about 2000 PMs per day at Bungie.net and I have never, ever had one from an admitted cheat saying why they did it.

Lots of peeps demand to know,

When exactly is Volume 2 of the Halo 2 soundtrack coming out?

I can't tell you exactly, because we still don't have a definitive date. But it will be available in summer, hopefully around or shortly after the release of the map pack retail disc. The new material is a collector's dream, although if you're looking for a sort of broad soundtrack, I'd still recommend the original version. This new one is packed with stuff that we couldn't fit on the original soundtrack and tends towards the more obscure (but often cooler) tracks. We'll have more details on that pretty soon. Marty has actually finished assembling the album, and gathering rare snippets with a couple of special guest musicians we may never identify.

Fuzzypuffis asks,

If rankings aren't meant to be a trophy, why show people what their rankings are and why have leaderboards? you could keep everybody's rank hidden and still use it to match people up....

Is there ever going to be a fix for the bug where...someone quits, and all the weapons respawn? so there are multiple snipers, RL's, etc.

And put the Banshee into containment for CTF and assault...the map pretty much sucks ass as it is anyway, but with a few more vehicles to help get across the huge pointless open space, it might be better....if I wanted to run forever for no reason I'd play Everquest 2.

The rankings are designed for the vast majority of players, literally, millions, to be matched against players of similar skill. Leaderboards simply show off the top five or ten most elite players because frankly, people are curious.

The weapon respawn thing you're talking about would cause more problems if fixed, than it does now (most people don't notice) so I'm afraid it will likely never change. Obviously not optimal, but the good thing is that it sort of self-balances. The opposing team can grab the "cloned" weapons too.

Erm, it takes about 30 seconds to run through the central trench on Containment. Or take a Hog. Or play a custom game and put the Banshee in. In practice, they only last a couple of seconds anyway, or until the opposing team gets the rocket launcher.

Max Iodine asks,

Why do people have to be sore WINNERS?

Yep. Often I will lose, go back into the lobby and have someone berate me for losing. "You suck man, I owned you!!!"

Now this sort of confuses me, because normally a victory would make someone happy. But no. We live in a world where folks are sore winners AND losers. I blame parents and teachers for telling kids that they're ALL special. They're NOT all special. Newsflash, some of you are mediocre, and some of you are actually really crappy kids with bad manners and not much in the way of brains. When your mom tells you that you can be anything you want to be? She's totally lying dude. You're going to be working the graveyard shift and living in a loveless marriage in a bad part of town before you know it. Up to your eyes in debt, the closest thing you'll have to a friend will be the repo guy who just came to repossess that lemon of a Buick you bought. What were you thinking? And all because you couldn't keep your mouth shut after you won a game of Halo 2.

APK asks,

I just played a ridiculous game of assault on Headlong where a team member of mine kept started each round with betrayals and then killed all of us as the other team ran in the base so they could plant the bomb.
Where can I go to report this a-hole?

Just leave feedback on him after the game session. You can probably still find his Gamertag in your recent players list., scroll left from your friends list and press X to see what your options are. Enough cheating feedback will get him banned. Don't abuse feedback and use it only when you have a genuine grievance.

FrankDawg420 asks,

Why isn't the Fuel Rod gun available in multiplayer?

Two very good reasons, performance and balance. It's waaaaay too powerful for most of the Halo 2 maps, and it also chugs when you have more than a couple on screen at once. It would have been cool, but we have to make sure all the weapons are as balanced as possible and we have to keep the frame rate nice and smooth. Fuel Rod gun would have killed both.

Usertolley asks,

Now that the 360 has been unveiled, are you guys going to unveil Halo 3 for Xbox 360?

We're quite some time away from announcing what our next game is and for which platform. We'll tell you when we're ready to talk about it. The 360 looks sweet though. I've seen one in real life and it looks even better up close. Personally, I am very excited to have a new thing to attach to my HDTV. And the controller rules. Obvious MS bias aside, I can tell you it's one of my favorite controllers ever. Wires suck. Anyone who's used a Wavebird can tell you that. And now the subject has changed again.

Spiv asks,

What do you think of the 360? Have you played it? What are your impressions?

As I mentioned above, I have been lucky enough to play around with the controllers and the machine itself. It's lovely. The color is weird, hard to describe – it's not exactly white and pearlescent would be the wrong way to describe it. It's sort of deep and shiny looking, and the contrast with the honeycomb vents, and the hard drive attachment is really nice. I keep reading on the forums about how it can't stand horizontally – erm, it stands perfectly well. I will probably end up placing mine horizontally too, since the shelves on my entertainment center are too short for vertical placement. I'm looking forward to playing almost everything, from Perfect Dark Zero to Project Gotham 3. Those cars looked sick. I can also reveal that I had a chance to see Kameo up close and personal. It's utterly lovely. And full of surprises. And being a huge Ghost Recon fan… .

And finally, KittenBus asked, can we see what Mister Chief would look like if Miyazaki made a Mister Chief movie?

I'm sure Mister Chief is next on Miyazaki's list.