The Boards Behind the Story

In conjunction with todays 'Making of the Halo 2 Demo' story focusing on cinematics, we've updated the storyboards section over at T&R; with a few more panels from the E3 Demo. Enjoy!

Help Wanted

We've got a new job opening up today over at Bungie.com (you know, the other Bungie site, the one nobody visits). We're looking for someone to help us with the next iteration of Bungie.net. Are you the one for the job?

FanFest 2003 T-Shirts Available

The Official FanFest 2003 t-shirt was recently added to the Bungie Store for your purchasing pleasure. There were only a limited amount left over from the event so if you want one, act quickly. When they're gone, they're gone!

Pillar of Art - Update

Details were released today regarding the gallery showing for the Pillar of Art fan art contest that recently took place over at HBO. Next Saturday, July 5, all entries will be on display at the Selkirk Gallery in New York. A LAN party is being scheduled following the showing. If you live in the area, head over to halo.bungie.org to sign up and get more info!

FanFest Documentary - Update

As I mentioned in the FanFest Flashback story, a full blown documentary is in the works from Mr.Smiley. He and his team are still working their magic on the hours of footage they captured but they recently finished 'Episode 0' which pays tribute to the famed RedvsBlue series and hints at what's to come.

A Windows Media and Quicktime version is available. (Right click, 'save as') Check it out!

Episode One should be released very soon. Stay tuned.

Freshen up your Chapter

We've got two new themes for all you Founders out there who are looking to spice up the visuals in your Chapter. A big shout out goes to gholsbane for the "Warrior" theme and to poenadare for "Revolution." (Better late than never, right guys? =) If you've got an idea for a theme that's worthy of the 7th Column, download the theme builder and get to work! If is passes our rigorous inspection process we'll add it to the list of official 7th Column Themes!

Pillar of Art Contest

Our friends over at HBO just wrapped up a giant Halo fan art contest called the Pillar of Art. Over twenty submissions were sent in ranging from sketches to oil paintings to a full 3D model of a Battle Rifle! All of these pieces are to be displayed in an actual art gallery sometime next month. (more details to come)

Congratulations to Adam Vehige who won first place. Second place went to Richard Menchaca, third to Russ Leach and a special award goes out to Geoff Chang.

Everyone did a fantastic job and all of the entries are very impressive. Head over to the gallery and see for yourself.

Halo 2 E3 Demo Video

If you're just joining us and you're looking for the Halo 2 E3 video, here's a handy link to the original story which contains a list of mirror sites where you can download the goods. You can also jump straight to the A/V section over at Tru7h & Reconciliation for a link to the latest mirror list.

One for the Road

As promised, we've got a brand spankin new Halo 2 screenshot for you all. While it's not nearly as cool as watching the whole video in action, it's still damn cool! Those cars explode oh so nicely, don't they?

Discovery Channel Special

Next week the Discovery Channel will be airing a special documentary about the Xbox and Bungie Studios is one of the developers in the spotlight. "The X Factor: Inside Microsoft's Xbox" will air as part of the "On the Inside" series on Friday, June 20, at 8 PM (ET/PT) . In the meantime, check out this trailer for the upcoming show!

Today's the Day

The Halo 2 E3 video will be released in less than an hour! At 10:00 AM PDT we'll let you know where you can download it from. In the meantime, the last three storyboards from the E3 demo intro have been uploaded for your viewing pleasure. And, in case you haven't gotten your fill of new desktop wallpapers, two more have been added to the site. There's a new variation of the Ghost chase from the Halo 2 demo as well as sweet Warthog battle on the new Halo PC map, Timberland.

The Great Move

Sorry about the downtime earlier today. Remember last week when we had a DNS change? Well, today, we hooked up the servers that we moved into the new datacenter back into our server cluster. This means more people can view our site at once. So, again, sorry about the unannounced downtime.

The Flood Gates Are Open

The Halo 2 content flood continues... Head over to Tru7h & Reconciliation and check out a couple of new storyboards from the E3 demo as well as some new concept art. There's plenty more where that came from, stay tuned!

Just when you thought it was safe...

...to leave the site, BAM!, we've got more new stuff to throw at ya. It's not exactly Halo 2 related but it's equally as cool. mehve has posted a new Halo PC desktop over in the 'Extras' section of Tru7h & Reconciliation. Check it out!

Halo 2 Mania Underway

In celebration of the Halo 2 video release this Friday, we've got a few new tasty morsels for you to chew on. For starters, check out mehve's new story about a recent intelligence excursion with some members of the U.S. Special Forces. Then, to whet your appetite for the video, 2 new story boards have been added to our Tru7h & Reconciliation site. There's plenty more to come so stay tuned!

Webmaster at it again

A few of you might be experiencing some glitches when using the site this evening. We're not 100% sure but the evidence seems to point towards our destruction prone Webmaster. We're working to resolve the problem. Please be patient and come back again in a little while.

Halo 2 Video Incoming!

It's official... This Friday a video of the E3 2003 Halo 2 demo will be released to the world. Many of you have probably seen the various shaky cam versions floating around the net but this is the real deal - straight from the source, in all its glory.

The video version of the live E3 demo is roughly 8 minutes long and will be released in both Windows Media Player 9 (with 5.1 audio) as well as Quicktime formats.

Stay tuned throughout this week for special behind-the-scenes features and a few special treats!

Contest Update

Wow. There sure were a lot of entries for the Halo 2 content contest. It's taken me hours to sift through most of the entries and mark the good ones. For those of you patiently waiting, thank you. For those of you impatiently waiting, sending me messages while doing the pee-pee dance, be patient, your time is coming. I plan to do a write-up and announce the winners early next week.

Marathon Matures

The guys over at the Marathon OpenSource project, Aleph One, have done a major update to the application. Although we've noted before that they had TCP/IP working before, it is now running much more stable and they have played a successful 7 player game over the internet.
There are executables for both Windows and OSX. Keep up the good work, guys.