Podtacular 423: Guardians Unite

Posted on May 17, 2014 by Dust Storm

Yesterday, thousands of Halo fans were united in celebrating the announcement of Halo 5: Guardians. Master Chief’s journey continues Fall 2015, but people are already excited and speculating on where Chief’s journey is taking him, who is this new Spartan depicted in the teaser image and dissecting every pixel of the concept art posted by Frankie. Even knowing so little about the game, the recent actions of 343 have not gone unnoticed and Bonnie Ross’s statement about embracing the community has given Halo fans a new spark to gleam on. Epic news of epic proportions calls for an epic podcast, so we pulled some of the best minds from the Halo community to talk about this monumental announcement. Joining us is Greenskull (@Greenskull) from Ready Up Live, Mark Turcotte (@MarkTurc) from Guardian Radio, Vanirfreyja  (@Vanirfreyja) from GrifballHub and the former BigTeamBattle.net, Laird (@LairdSVF) from Halo Collector, SaUcEySOARS (@SaUcEySOARS) from Beyond Entertainment, Matty McDee (@MattyMcDee) from /r/Halo, and lastly Chance King (@HaloDispatch) from Halo Dispatch.  Make sure to check out all of our guests and their sites and show your support for the Halo community.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:42:01 — 111.0MB)

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The Great Journey – Frankie Comments on Halo’s Legacy

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Dust Storm

Halo 5: Guardians Concept Art

Halo 5: Guardians Concept Art

With the recent announcement of Halo 5: Guardians on Xbox Wire, Frank O’Connor, Franchise Development Director for the Halo Franchise, shares his thoughts on the announcement.  He points out the mention of the Halo Journey shared by Bonnie Ross, 343 Industries’ General Manager, has lead people to suspect a little more than what we’ve gotten in the past.  It’s a huge weight off their shoulders to get the announcement out and affirms what fans have said that Halo needs a three year development cycle.

343 Industries is definitely looking to the future on the Xbox One as they already called out 60 fps and dedicated servers last year.  Halo has been at the innovative end of Xbox for a while, pushing the limits of the system ever since the original Xbox in 2001.  Frankie writes,

Previous Halo titles, Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 for example, strove to push the entire ecosystem forward – dual stick FPS with big open spaces in the case of Combat Evolved, and broadband matchmaking in Halo 2 – are just a couple of examples of the series innovating or amplifying ideas. So in building Halo 5: Guardians, we want to push the ecosystem as well as the universe. And we’ll have some surprises in store for new and loyal players of the series.

As a token of their appreciation for all Halo fans, they have some nice new wallpapers for you to go download for virtually any device.

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Halo 5: Guardians Announced for 2015

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Dust Storm

Halo 5: Guardians
This morning, Halo fans everywhere awoke or stayed up for one epic announcement: Halo 5: Guardians. 343 Industries General Manager, Bonnie Ross posted on Xbox Wire this morning that Halo 5, that continues the story of Master Chief, will be coming out Fall of 2015. In her article, Ross says,

“Halo 5: Guardians” is a bigger effort than “Halo 4.”  That applies to the content and scope of the game, as well as the technology in what’s now a brand new and more powerful engine.  Certainly there are some core elements carried over from prior games, but we’ve invested a huge effort in retooling our tech to take full advantage of the Xbox One’s hardware and ecosystem to create worlds and experiences worthy of next-gen.

Halo 5 is a huge undertaking for the studio and they are looking to make a game “worthy of next-gen”.  343 Industries has been making some very select hires over the last few months including Eric “GH057ayame” Hewitt and Jeff “GrimBrother One” Eastering, showing some very good promise for the future of Halo.  Ross comments on the emphasis the team has taken on learning from Halo 4 and using the talented team 343 Industries has built by embracing the community.

It’s a game that will hopefully demonstrate the talent, learnings and abilities of the 343 Industries team. A game that will incorporate the things we learned from “Halo 4” about technology, aesthetics, performance and scale – and perhaps more importantly, understanding and embracing a community of gamers who love what lies at the heart of this game, and the limitless potential of the “Halo” universe.

There will be more information on Halo in 2014 at this year’s E3 Xbox Media Briefing happening June 9th.

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Podtacular 422: It’s Elementary

Posted on May 11, 2014 by Dust Storm

We were supposed to start our discussions for our Halo 5 roundtables this week, but due to some scheduling conflicts for the people we were getting on, we are going to try again next week. Not to worry though; there’s still plenty of Halo news out there besides the matchmaking update in the weekly Halo Bulletin. Halo Waypoint tweeted out a Minecraft image with a Master Chief Steve skin, a Halo in the sky and what seems to be some custom Halo-themed blocks that hints at a Halo mash-up pack for Minecraft on Xbox. More rumors are floating around the Xbox press conference that will take place at E3 this year. A new Legendary speed-run for the Halo PC campaign was achieved and element 117 was discovered.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:11:27 — 51.6MB)

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Podtacular 421: Over Expansion

Posted on May 4, 2014 by Dust Storm

Sometimes things don’t quite go as planned during the week and cascading effects start to roll over things we have scheduled. This week was victim to one such occurrence, so we don’t quite start on the full fledged Halo 5 series, but we do discuss our thoughts about where the franchise is going and the implications of Halo 5 were indeed coming out next year. While everyone would love to have the next Halo experience soon, we feel it would be best if 343 took the time to really nail the Halo experience for the next installment. You can listen to our thoughts on the topic in this week’s episode. We also touch on the mention of a Halo drama in the works with Showtime. Whether or not this is related to either of the existing projects is still unclear, but it does beg the question of how much time and effort is being spent outside developing the game. And of course we talk about the latest in Matchmaking news from this week’s Halo Bulletin.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:14:25 — 54.1MB)

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Xbox Originals Coming This June, Halo Digital Feature Starts Shooting

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Dust Storm


Xbox announced today that Xbox Originals will be hitting Microsoft devices in June. This includes project like the Halo TV series being produced by Steven Speilberg and the Halo digital feature being produced by Ridley Scott. Xbox Originals is Microsoft’s solution to bringing content and entertainment to their platforms similar to the Netflix and Hulu original features. There are a total of twelve projects slated for release this year among which are the two Halo productions. According to Polygon, shooting for the digital feature starts this week and Microsoft is looking to expand and enhance some of it’s other proprietary franchises though this medium.

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Podtacular 420: Heavy Lifting

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Dust Storm

This week, we tackle three [1][2][3] Halo Bulletins as we’ve been otherwise pre-occupied with other things happening lately. Ninja Assassins is currently out as a pretty fun spin off the Shotty (replaced with Swords) Snipes gametype from previous Halo titles. Coming up next week though is the return of Multi-team in the rotational playlist and Heavies as a permanent option in Halo 4 matchmaking.

Shownotes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:06:40 — 47.9MB)

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