The Bungie Weekly Update is live (after some oddness) - it’s not very meaty, but the view inside Bungie Studios at the end is nothing short of frightening. Go read! (If you have any sort of problem with Bungie.net, it’s always up in our Weekly Update Archive.)(Louis Wu 02:07:10 +0000)

We haven’t heard from Pyrosmile in a little bit - but they’ve been busy. We got three separate alerts yesterday: Master Chief Theater 3000: Episode 209 is now online, covering the Gravemind cutscene from Halo 2. They were interviewed recently by Machinima.com - you can get some information about the interview (and links) on Pyrosmile.org. And they’ve posted Episode 3 of Smiley’s PAX adventure, which includes a meetup with Halobabies’ Gruntsbane. (Minimal Halo content, but we were covering the rest of the stuff anyway…)(Louis Wu 13:54:54 +0000)

Z let us know that you can find a new trailer from Robosteeze and CitriC AcID over at Halo3Forum.com - it’s called ‘Psylence’, and the filmwork is quite nice! The full montage it advertises will be out sometime in 2009. Check it!(Louis Wu 13:51:35 +0000)

AnTi PRO let us know that Arm The Flag and Bryan Simon have gotten together to create a music video using Bryan’s ‘One Shot on my X’ - funny stuff! Go watch.
(Louis Wu 17:16:29 +0000)

uber_chaos sent along an audio clip (617k, mp3 format) from the Hellboy II director’s commentary, during which Guillermo Del Toro discusses the helmet he designed for the character Johann Krauss (you can see it here) - and how this evolved from a design for the Master Chief’s helmet when he was thinking about the Halo movie. Interesting discussion!
(Louis Wu 17:09:49 +0000)

zofinda noticed that the Holiday 08 issue of the Official Xbox Magazine has an excerpt from the upcoming novel from Tobias Buckell, The Cole Protocol. (There’s also a short interview with the author.) If you’re interested in what the excerpt holds, zofinda wrote up an overview later on in the thread.(Louis Wu 17:42:59 +0000)

Nick, from Halo3RPG.com, let us know that they’re running a puzzle map contest. It’s unclear what that really means, and without an account over there you can’t even read the news items - but if you’re interested, sign up, sign in, and read about it. Contest ends on November 28, and the prize is Recon armor (on Halo3RPG).(Louis Wu 17:42:22 +0000)

On this quieter-than-usual Veterans Day, we’d like to offer you another chapter in the ongoing Solo Legendary All Skulls On walkthrough from Daniel ‘Tyrant’ Morris - this one is huge. It covers the level ‘The Covenant‘, and the nearly 20 videos add up to almost 400 mb worth of visual aid. (Once again, these are split between two pages.) Go read… and go watch!(Louis Wu 16:02:27 +0000)

Remember Fairfax? Looks like he’s making his way through Xbox headquarters! Check it out. Thanks to The Don Wan for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 15:17:17 +0000)

News from McFarlane - a couple of interesting announcements. They’ve announced a new series of Halo Wars mini-figures - 2.5 inches, sold in 3-packs, available in March; you can check out the pics on their site. Also, they’ve released a “Top 10 ‘must Have’ Holiday Toys For $10” list - two of these figures are Halo figures. If you’re thinking about giving Halo figures to friends/family for the holidays - save some dough!(Louis Wu 12:45:43 +0000)