Halo 3 Planet

I mentioned on the forum that I’d be linking to the achievement guides I make on AchievementHunter.com, and with two weeks of videos under my belt, it’s time for the first batch.

Unfortunately my first batch happened to come about during a VERY busy time of my life, University Final Exam week(s). With all the studying I’ve been doing, I only managed to post two videos in my first two weeks with the site. Oh well. The videos are linked below.

The first 4 achievements in Fallout 3 (Vault 101 Citizenship Award, The G.O.A.T. Whisperer, Escape!, and Psychotic Prankster)

A guide to getting Fable 2’s “The Menace to Society” achievement

I apologize for the fact that neither of the videos is Halo 3 related, but realistically we won’t be covering much more of Halo 3 (at Achievement Hunter that is) until Halo 3: ODST arrives sometime next year. Until then, I hope you enjoy my guides all the same. I’ll be adding a new wrap-up of my achievement guides every second week.

Here at H3P we focus typically on the stories themselves, and not the admins posting them. Myself (Adam) and David (the webmaster) have been bringing you stories about Halo for over a year, and as of last night, I’m also bringing achievement tutorial videos to AchievementHunter.com, a site dedicated to showing users how to get achievements in games on the XBox 360, as well as other platforms that are now starting to support achievement-like goals. Achievement Hunter also happens to have a special tie to Halo, as it is a Rooster Teeth project.

You may recall that Rooster Teeth invented Halo machinima with it’s outrageously funny series Red vs Blue. Over the past 6 years they have entertained us with machinima from Halo, The Sims, Shadowrun, FEAR, and released a teaser for a new Red vs Blue animated series at PAX this year.

In order to gain this spot at Achievement Hunter I had to win a competition that involved myself and 39 other entrants sending in demo videos, with the promise of a spot as a Hunter and a Blackmagic Intensity capture card, the same fantastic card that Rooster Teeth uses for all of their fantastic videos.

What this means for H3P is that I’ll be updating the front page weekly with new Achievement Hunter and Rooster Teeth news, as well as the usual digest of interesting Halo 3 news and announcements.

Here’s the original story in it’s entirety. I’m known as LBCountry on Rooster Teeth if you want to drop me a line there.

Just announced at Tokyo Game Show 2008: Halo 3 Recon (Previously “Halo 3: Keep it Clean”) will be released in Fall 2009, featuring a new protagonist, a ODST marine.

Halo 3: Recon is a prologue to Halo 3 that goes through major events leading up the Halo 3 from an entirely new perspective.

Halo 3 Recon Video

Video of the Halo 3 Recon is now available on Bungie.net.

The video continues where the previous teaser left off, showing the drop pod crash through a building, where an ODST later emergest. The trooper is alone, and in a hostile environment with covenant ships and brutes scouting for survivors.

We see our new hero head off, as Halo 3 Recon takes the screen.

New Hero.

New Campaign.

Prepare to Drop Fall 2009.

The “Prepare To Drop” trailer is filled with hidden clues about the upcoming Expansion Pack for Halo 3. We’ve put together an analysis of important frames so you don’t have too.

Right from the start, we see a covenant cruiser flying somewhere in New Mombosa. It’s assumed that this is just moments before Regret makes his jump in New Mombasa in Halo 2. Several seconds later, we see a huge explosion which may be caused by the slipspace rift.

Confirmation that this is in fact New Mombasa, and it has been evacuated.

We see a series of drop pods closing in on New Mombasa, coming in two different directions. The Super Intendent AI targets the ones dropping to the right, and displays a message “AUTH.NEGATIVE”.

In the same few frames as above, the message, ‘ACTIVATING SUBROUTINE “VERGIL”‘ and “WARNING! DATA LEAK ON LEVEL 9!” are displayed. These messages show up several times in short intervals throughout the teaser.

After the huge slipspace rift, everything goes dark, and a sequence of messages display very rapidly on the screen. “Maddie, Where are you?” is one of the messages.

“Danger.Flood Zone” is another one of the messages.

Following these messages, we find a possible release date for Halo: Prepare to Drop. Hidden in some meaningless text is a date that reads 01/06/09.

A lone drop pod emerges at 53 seconds. There is no indication why emphasis has been put on it, but it could perhaps contain our protagonist(s). Could it be the chief? We doubt it since it wouldn’t seem to make sense with the timeline.

Rather, we like to believe that the first series of drop pods were all wiped out by the slipspace rift. In response, a team is deployed, but only one (perhaps the only one that remains?)

This fits in nicely with the recent posts by the Super Super Intendent on Bungie.net:

[COMM.DUTY.OFFICER]: “Listen. We have a report of core data corruption.” Corrupted by the blast?

[COMM.DUTY.OFFICER]: “We’re sending a team, alright?” Officer is sending team to the corrupted SI?

[SMN.ACTUAL]: “Empty archer pods six through twelve!”…
[SMN.ACTUAL]: “It may have passed us, Lieutenant, but it’s still in range.”…
[EXPLOSION (2.3482s)]
[STATIC (3.8761s)] Pods are deployed — the ship is still in range (on Earth) — then a long explosion and static. Coincidentally, the Explosion and static is nearly precisely the same amount of time the explosion and static for the slipspace rift lasts in the trailer.

[SMN.ACTUAL]: “Alright, Captain. You’ve got your squad.” After the explosion, an additional squad is confirmed.

Prepare to Drop seems to be the name of the expansion.

Did we miss anything?

On Thursday morning at 7:07 a.m. PST, Bungie released a trailer for their Expansion for the Campaign of Halo 3.

Early Thursday morning, a trailer revealing appeared on the Xbox Live Marketplace and Bungie.net. It’s difficult to determine whether the trailer is an expansion of Halo 3, or a new game entirely. In the trailer, the Halo 3 logo is shown, as well as the words, “Prepare to Drop“.

On the Xbox Live Marketplace, the description reads:

“High action and deep mystery await players in the new Halo 3 campaign experience. Prepare to drop!”

Bungie had originally intended to make this announcement during E3 2008, but had their plans changed by their publisher Microsoft. Before changing, a mysterious counter had appeared on Bungie.net which was stopped, and then returned on Wednesday, Sep. 24th 2008.

Many speculated that this announcement could have been for the now confirmed “Mythic Map Pack“. According to Bungie.net, “We do have new maps still coming to Halo 3 but the release specifics are still being worked out with our partners.“