Halo Waypoint has uploaded a video in a series about the Anatomy of Halo. Here is the first part.

Anatomy of Halo Part 1

One thing of note that I didn’t know before was the interior land width. In the video it was said to be 318 kilometers. That equated to 197.596 miles or 197 miles and 1049 yards.

To put that into perspective it is like going from New York City to Boston, approximately.

http://halo.xbox.com/blogs/Headlines/post/2012/02/08/The-Halo-Bulletin-2812.aspx

This week’s bulletin from Waypoint is well..boring and misleading at the same time.

Let me give you the synopsis:

• Talk of a Super Bowl party with details of gorging on food, blah blah, BS Angel being inappropriate a few times, blah blah blah.
• Boring screenshot
• Stats topic-this in an effort to stave off the negative feelings felt throughout the Halo community after it was announce last week that 343 would NOT be allowing API to be used by the community and is not planned to be used in the near future. Your stats, your COMPLETE stats that is, are being held hostage…LOL. Seriously, I love checking stats, but I can live without them. Point is though that 343 is just taking them away without a suitable/comparable replacement. Sorry Waypoint, your stat system is woefully inadequate when compared to sites like HaloTracker and the now defunct Halo Charts. Don’t try to deny that.
• Team Slayer jackpot possibility of 50K credits. Okay that’s about the coolest part of the bulletin. Special Campaign challenge can net you 10K credits. Good enough.
• Next Frank O’Conner talks about Halo 4…well not really. He talks about the talks he’s had with European partners about Halo 4 and how they were all excited. All well and good but it’s we fans who will be buying the game, map packs, toys, etc. that really need to hear this info. Right now we’re getting a bunch of promises that the game is awesome. But they are rather empty. I really do want to have faith in what 343 can produce. That faith is being sorely tested with the lack of info. I’m not the only one. All you need do is check out the forums on Waypoint to see the dissension regarding the lack of info.
• Some community questions are answered, kind of.

In other words, you can skip the bulletin for this week. Other than the 50K credits for play Team Slayer, there isn’t anything else of worth in it. 😛

Via HaloWaypoint.com:

What’s next for Halo Waypoint.

Our friends at Bungie recently announced that as part of Halo’s transition to 343, they will no longer update game stats and player service records, host new user-generated content, or operate the Bungie Pro Service after March 31. There has been a lot of discussion and some confusion around this transition, so we wanted to take a moment to tell you what will be affected and what’s next for Halo Waypoint.

Starting on April 1, we will be increasing Halo: Reach File Share capacity from 6 slots to 24 slots at no extra charge. All Halo: Reach files, including films, screenshots, game types, and maps, will continue to be fully accessible in-game, just like they are today. We’re also excited to announce that we are bringing Halo: Reach File Share access to the web version of Halo Waypoint this summer. After March 31, there will be a short period where new Halo: Reach user-generated content will not be accessible from the web.

While the real-time export of Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST data to the web will not be supported on Waypoint at the time of this transition, data collection is still taking place. In fact, Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST stats will continue to be reflected in your Halo Waypoint Career. To access your Halo Career, log on to the website, and click the drop-down arrow located to the right of your gamertag at the top of the screen. Then, click the Career Overview panel. There you will see the total number of Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo Wars, and Halo: Reach Campaign and Multiplayer games you’ve played throughout your entire Halo career. You can also see Games Played, Time Played, Total Kills, and Kill/Death information for each title by selecting it in the Halo Stats Summary column.

The most noticeable changes will include those features seen exclusively on Bungie.net, such as rendered films, nameplates, and Halo: Reach API keys. Those features are not included in the transition, and we do not have plans to develop similar features at this time.

343’s focus for the near future is ensuring that the Halo: Reach experience is the best it can be, both in-game and on the web, expanding our Halo Waypoint services, and making Halo 4, which you can expect to hear more about in the not-so-distant future. We’re excited about continuing to evolve the Halo franchise, and we thank you for joining us on this ride.

———–

So this means folks that if you want to capture some Halo 3 or ODST goodness, you better do so in the next two months. After that it’s gone for good. Sadface for that.

The uber cool AI is available if you’re sporting a female avatar. This is one time I’m changing my avatar to female.

You can buy the costume through the Marketplace on LIVE or go to XBOX.com and buy her here: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Cortana-Costume/00000ffc-64ea-f262-c5ec-8d634d5309cf?cid=SLink

She’ll run you 320MSP, so it’s up to you to decide if she’s worth it for that price.

How I missed this I don’t know. Now I know, so you will too…LOL

The Pillar of Autumn is available for your avatar on XBOX LIVE Marketplace or XBOX.com.

Here’s a YouTube vid of it:

You can buy it here: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Pillar-of-Autumn/00001000-7c9f-2223-c79a-34d44d5309cf?cid=SLink

And…I just bought it!

Okay folks a very cool Easter Egg has unfolded. Besides watching the terminals in Halo CE: Anniversary you can earn credits by unlocking them on Waypoint through the XBOX.

Here is how. First watch a terminal you have unlocked. At the end you will see a sequence of symbols like in the following pic (this is the terminal for the level “Halo”):

Write these down, then go to Waypoint on your XBOX.

Press start and you’ll go to the normal screen:

From here do not go any further. Instead press the “X” button on your controller. You will then go to a screen with a series of colored circles:

Those represent the color buttons on your controller. They are random so don’t enter the ones you see here, enter the ones you see on your screen. Enter them left to right. Don’t worry about if they are higher or lower on screen, that doesn’t matter. Just left to right.

If you do that correctly, then you will go to this screen:

This is the master list of Forerunner glyphs. Enter in the code from the terminal that you wrote down. Note: You MUST unlock the terminal in the campaign first for this to work. If you enter in a code you found elsewhere you will get an error saying you must first find the terminal in the campaign (so you can’t cheat and look them up on YouTube).

As you can see the code is entered and you just need to go to the bottom right to complete the entry. Once done properly you will see this screen:

Note that the Forerunner glyphs are now brighter blue. From here you will go to another screen showing the terminal you unlocked. When you do this for the first time for each terminal you will earn 7K credits (for each terminal).

Once you’ve found all 10 terminals in the campaign and unlocked them on Waypoint, you will receive an additional 37K credits AND a special 11th terminal that can’t be accessed through the game.

If you want to watch the video of where I got the screenshots from watch below:

Today I tried out the challenge feature on Halo Wayoint. Not on XBOX, but through the website. You can assign a certain challenge by what the goal is, if you want it on a specific map, if you want it to be Firefight, Campaign, or Multiplayer, level of difficulty and if you want the people you are challenging to have to put on specific skulls to get the challenge.

I created three separate ones today.

In the first pic you’ll see the parameters I set up for that challenge: 

As you can see you can add your own special name for the challenge. This one is for Campaign, killing 500 enemies on Oni Sword Base at Heroic difficulty with several skulls on. It only had a window of 3 hours to complete.

In the next pic you can see a challenge similar to the first one. Here you see which skulls had to be turned on for the challenge, as well as how many credits a person can earn by completing the challenge. You have no idea how many credits it will assign until AFTER you’ve confirmed the challenge. I’ve noticed that the shorter amount of time given significantly adds the credits one can earn by completing a challenge.

In the third pic you can see that three people (including myself) completed the challenge. I got first place because I finished it first. I thought that the person issuing the challenge couldn’t earn the credits but it turns out otherwise. So challenge away!

Now to further explain this all… In order to get the credits you MUST first log into Waypoint, either through XBOX, or online. ACCEPT the challenge. Then go play the game and get the challenge done within the time allotted. You will not see the challenge in the challenge screen while playing, so you’ll have to check online or go to Waypoint between games to check your progress. Note: It may take a couple of minutes after a game for your just finished game to upload to Waypoint and the stats calculated.

Once you complete the challenge, you won’t see anything that says you completed it, however at the end of the game you will see the credits add up. In the case of the 10K one, I had one of my friends check his credits before the game we expected him to get the challenge done. When the game was done the credits were awarded and he confirmed that by the total of credits he had, seeing that it had gone up by more than 10K (which included the other credits for performance bonus, slot machine, etc.).

If you do issue a challenge to your friends, be sure to let them know by a message on LIVE so they know about it and can accept it.

Have fun!