ODST Buck in Halo 5??? More than possible!

Posted on 06/13/2014 by Sal

So in amongst all of the excitement that was the Halo Master Chief Collection, there comes a tie bit that seems to have gone unnoticed. Until now. My friend and fellow gaming group member, HFFL Big Cheese, let me know that there Frank O’Conner has said there was a voice over easter egg in the trailer.

Check out the Halo 5 Guardians Beta trailer again. This time listen VERY closely starting at the 10 second mark. You’ll hear a Spartan yell, “Ready? Let’s move!”

The voice sounds VERY much like Nathan Fillion. He’s of course known for Firefly and Castle. However, he’s an AVID Halo fan as well. He’s had voice overs in several games, being featured prominently in Halo 3: ODST as a character. He also has the same role in a cameo within Reach.

Could it be that Nathan Fillion/ODST Buck will be in Halo 5 Guardians? AND that he’s become a Spartan? I’ve surmised for some time that if Spartan IVs are being taken from the rank and file of the UNSC and the comment of Buck being, “If he were any better, he’d be a Spartan” than Buck most definitely could now become a Spartan.

Has my (and I’m sure many of your) wishes become true?

Well, here’s another clue…

Hmm, now why would the acclaimed Mr. Fillion be at this year’s E3, I wonder? Yes, he might be involved with Destiny. However, his appearance with Dan Ayoub, Executive Producer with 343, just might present itself as a thing to come.

So how about it? Would you like to see Buck become a Spartan and be in Halo 5? Reply below. If you’re not yet a subscriber, then please do so, so you can reply to this an all other blog articles.

-Sal

HFFL Community night tonight from 8pm-Midnight EST!

Posted on 06/13/2014 by Sal

Last Friday’s HFFL Community night was a blast. I decided then to have this every week.

Come and join me and other HFFL folks tonight. Starting at 8 pm tip Midnight EST, we’ll be playing in Halo 4. We’ll start with some customs then move into matchmaking. What playlist we go into will be determined by party size so that none is left behind.

You do not have to be there the whole time. You can show up at first and leave early, show up in the middle and stay for the rest or leave early. However you want to get some gaming time in is fine.

To be a part of the gaming session, message me over XBOX Live starting at 7:45pm EST. Let me know you want an invite to join in the fun. My gamer tag is: HaloFanForLife1.

It’s preferred that you have a mic so as to help with team communication, but not necessary. I look forward to seeing all who turn out tonight!

-Sal

So you may have noticed I didn’t blog yesterday…with good reason.

Posted on 06/13/2014 by Sal

There is a good reason why I didn’t blog yesterday. I had intended on blogging the Halo Bulletin. However, it seems this week Bravo is skipping the bulletin in lieu of the E3 announcement.

But that’s not the big reason. I’m taking my own journey of a sorts. Many of you that have been a subscriber for awhile know that I do not shy away from the fact that I’m a big man. Not height, but weight. Well, I’m doing something about that now. Not just a simple diet, nor just exercise either.

My journey actually began a couple of months ago. I read an article on Yahoo about a mother who had her family cut out nearly all processed sugars from their food intake and how that not only improved their health but mental strength as well. I talked with my wife and came up with a plan to do the same or very similar thing. Starting near the end of March I gradually starting cutting processed sugars from my diet, then May 1, I cut nearly all of it out. Instead of processed sugar foods, I replaced them with fruit. Any time I get an urge for a snack, I’m eating an apple or banana or grapes for example. this has already shown a difference as I’ve lost 29 lbs since starting this in March.

Now I’ve taken my next step. On Tuesday, I went to a health seminar on gastric surgery. Now I know some of you may think, ‘well that’s the easy way out’. Believe me folks, it’s not. Ive struggled with my weight for more than 10 years. Now that I’m in my mid 40s, I really need to do something about it. I’ve trie diets. I’ve tried the gym. While partially successful in both regards, I always ended up putting the weight back on. Before I can undergo the gastric surgery, I have to be on a doctor supervised health plan for 5-6 months. Each month reporting in to the doctor with my food intake as well as taking my weight measurement to see it I’m not gaining weight. If I do, that would immediately disqualify me for the surgery.

Just yesterday I was approved to begin this leg of the journey. So over the next several months you may see an occasional post about this. I won’t deluge the blog with them. Just something once a month to show my progress.

Should all go well during this phase, I would have the surgery in December. Just in time for me to chill out with the Halo 5 Guardians BETA!

So getting back to yesterday. While all of the planning I had to do, the excitement of it all and such, I really didn’t have the time to blog. This is a rare occurrence as many of you subscribers know. I’m usually posting at leaf one article a day, many times more than one.

So I invite you to stick with HFFL, even when I might have to take a day off from blogging. You know there is always going to be something I’ll blog about. Be that Halo news, toy reviews, podcasts, fan art, Halo novels, comic books, etc.

I also invite those who haven’t yet subscribed to please do so. It’s FREE to do so. Click on the tab in the menu bar near top for subscribing. As well, please join the HFFL forums. It’s still pretty new at only a few months old. We need your input and ideas. The forums are a great place to do just that.

Wish me well on my personal journey. In the meantime, continue the Halo journey with me here at halofanforlife.com!

-Sal

Halo 2 campaign still AWESOME!

Posted on 06/13/2014 by Sal

In honor of the Halo Master Chief Collection as well as the Halo 2 Anniversary portion of it being announced Monday, I decided play Halo 2’s campaign.

Wednesday night starting at roughly 10pm I started my Halo 2 campaign experience again. It had been several years since I had play the campaign and now was the time to celebrate it and relive it again. Thursday morning at just around 5:30am I finished the fight. Along the way I had lots of memories flooding (no pun intended) back to me.
• Fighting in Cairo Station
• Running the streets of New Mombasa
• The Bridge! (Really love that part for the Scorpion)
• Switching between Chief and the Arbiter
• Fighting the Heretic
• Going through all sorts of places in High Charity
• Facing the Flood (heh, no going lie, that got my blood pumping)
• The underwater transport (totally forgot about the fish)
• Attacking the Prophet
• Being the Arbiter and attacking other Covenant, giving Sgt. Johnson cover in a Banshee while he was in the Scarab

I could go on and on. Just SO many memories and still so much fun. I can’t wait to see what the new graphics look like throughout the whole campaign. We got but a taste of them from E3. If I could still enjoy the campaign in it’s original graphics from ten years ago, I’m CERTAIN I’m going to be enthralled by the updated graphics version!

-Sal

Halo 5 Guardians BETA to last nearly FOUR weeks!

Posted on 06/11/2014 by Sal

Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer beta will run from December 27, 2014, and end on January 22.

While that time isn’t unprecedented for BETAs it is for 343. If you recall there was no PUBLIC Beta for Halo 4, much to the outcry of fans. That later came to bite 343 in the butt. It’s clear they and Microsoft have learned their lesson about not having a Beta for a Halo game.

What’s heat about the timing of this is that it’s like a Christmas present from 343 to us!

I know what I’ll be playing almost exclusively during that time!!!

-Sal

Play Arts Halo 2 Anniversary Master Chief!

Posted on 06/11/2014 by Sal

Just announced today, there will be a Halo 2 Anniversary Play Arts KAI Master Chief figure.

Obviously the one shown in the pic has not yet been painted. Price and Release date not yet mentioned, but you can bet, I’ll post it when I do find it. Likely to be $60-80.

This is to be shown at SDCC 2014, so it may be likely it’s going to be sold there as well.

-Sal

Halo Master Chief Pre-order bonuses

Posted on 06/10/2014 by Sal

Yep, pre-order bonuses are back…

The good thing is, they are skulls that we should be able to unlock through normal gameplay anyway. These will just give players a quick step up on skulls.

Let’s take a look at these bonuses, shall we?

Amazon’s pre-order will get you the Piñata skull. With the Piñata Skull, enemies will drop plasma grenade with every melee! You can pre-order from Amazon HERE.

Here’s Best Buy’s bonus. The Grunt Funeral Skull. You can pre-order from Best Buy HERE.

Lastly (for now), Gamestop’s pre-order bonus, the Bandana Skull. The Bandana Skull provides unlimited ammo and grenades. You can pre-order form Gamestop HERE.

At least it’s not armor this time around. I STILL don’t have that Deadeye helmet from Halo 4 🙁

If there are more pre-order bonuses to come, you can bet I’ll be on it and let you all know.
-Sal

A game of love, Bravo’s thoughts from E3.

Posted on 06/10/2014 by Sal

Bravo posted this yesterday shortly after the Halo presentation at E3.

When I first heard murmurs that Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 4 were being re-mastered on a single disc, I, among many others (and over the past few weeks, possibly many of you) thought to myself “no way.” As time went on, murmurs turned into blueprints, but I’d still hear designers, testers, and producers ask “are we really gonna do this?”

Yes, we are indeed going to do this. Fast forward a bit to earlier this year, and I spot several teams across the studio working on a project that would come to be named Halo: The Master Chief Collection. On one screen, someone’s taking Cairo Station screenshots for our E3 reveal, on another, a 4v4 match on an early build of Halo 2: Anniversary’s Ascension is being played over, and over, and over again to ensure that the map is just right. At some point over the past several months, it began to dawn on me – the thing that looked insane and overly-ambitious on paper was actually becoming reality.

As I sit here at E3, I speak for many back home at 343 when I say that working on this project has and continues to be something truly special – not just as developers, but personally for me, as a fan of Halo. Whether it be countless late night matches of Halo 2 on Xbox Live, Legendary co-op runs of The Library (yes, that’s right), or long-lasting friends I’ve met through Halo, there’s a good chance that the games and experiences found in Halo: The Master Chief Collection are some of the reasons why we’re all here today, talking about the games and the franchise that we love. It is incredible to think not only about reliving many of these experiences, re-mastered at 60 fps and on dedicated servers, but also the new experiences that lie ahead for this year and beyond.

Earlier today, I had the extreme privilege of being on stage with Bonnie, Dan, Neighbor, and Ghost to showcase an early look at Halo 2: Anniversary multiplayer. Being here at E3 to announce Halo: The Master Chief Collection, along with Halo: Nightfall and the Halo 5: Guardians Multiplayer Beta was a humbling experience for far too many reasons, and we hope you’re excited about the journey we’re all about to embark on.

If you’d like to find out more about today’s announcements, you can head to our updated home page, which details each of the above projects as well as an eyeful of candy. Stay tuned to this blog throughout the week as we celebrate these announcements with exclusive assets, wallpapers, photos (aka shenanigans) and videos from E3. It’ll be a lot of fun, and I’d love for all of you to join us.

We’re sure you’ve got a ton of questions, and over the next few days, weeks, and months, we’ll have answers. Thanks for reading, and thanks for joining us in celebrating the announcement of The Master Chief Collection. As you’d expect, we’ll have more to talk about and reveal between now and November. For the latest news and updates, be sure to follow us on Twitter and check into Waypoint all week. We’ll try our best to make it worth your while. Enjoy!

Bravo

Master Chief Collection Official Wallpapers

Posted on 06/10/2014 by Sal

These were put out by Waypoint yesterday. I’d have gotten them out then, but I was pretty exhausted mentally. I was in a stream/podcast/blogging/tweeting for 12 hours straight. I posted a dozen or more articles on the blog. So, yep, I was pretty tired. Besides this left me with other things to post today…

So without further ado, here are the official HMCC wallpapers:

Facebook banner (four horsemen)

Twitter banner (four horsemen)

Facebook HMCC banner

Twitter banner

Twitter profile

The following are all from the digital series Halo: Nightfall. I’m really interested in this damaged Halo scene.1920×1080

1280×720

1024×768

windows phone

iPhone 5

Android phone

Surface

Android Tablet

iPad mini

iPad 2

Enjoy!
-Sal

The Master Chief Collection menus and in-game screenshots explained.

Posted on 06/10/2014 by Sal

Before I get start, I need to gov e a shout out to IGN. I pulled the following screens from their video footage of their interview with Frank O’Conner and Dan Ayoub of 343.(So blame IGN for the crappy resolution, LOL)

Okay, lets get this ball a rollin’

This is the start up screen. The circular bands around the logo rotate around it.
This next image below shows the main page of the UI (user interface). The menu bar at the top from left to right reads: Campaigns/Multiplayer/Playlists/Extras.These will be explained further down.
So here you see that Halo 2 Anniversary was selected from the Campaigns menu. To the right of Master Chief are the missions. They are all unlocked (form all 4 campaigns) from the start. This means you do not need to play through each campaign to get to certain missions.
There are more missions when you click as far to the right in the mission select area from the image below. Note the arrow next to the highlighted mission indicating as such. Below we see that you can choose what settings you want, level of difficulty you want to play on and use any skulls you have unlocked.
In the multiplayer section you see that you can select Find Game, Custom Game, or Spartan Ops. Obviously Spartan Ops is Halo 4 only.When you select Find Game, it takes you to the playlist selection. For instance below you see that Big Rumble is selected. It tells you team size, minimum player count and max party size, max local players. But there VERY cool new thing is to the right of that it shows you which of the four games this playlist is attached to. In this case ALL four are available for Big Rumble. This means that you may see of the three choices to vote on a map from CE Anniversary, Halo2 Anniversary, Halo 3 or Halo 4.
Now the image below shows that Rumble Pit is available for maps in Halo 2 Anniversary and Halo 4. BTW, these may change later on and are not yet locked in stone. Player feedback, choices and such will help dictate to 343 if they need to add another games maps to the playlist or take a games maps out of a playlist.
Here you see the Extras tab selected. Blur trailer is that of Blur, the company who did the Halo 2 Anniversary skins. Terminals are self explanatory. Good thing is we do NOT have to exit to Waypoint to see these now! Halo Nightfall is the ‘digital series’. Now I’m not sure if that launches from the disc or not, but from the interview it seems like it does. And finally the Halo 5 BETA. This will not be available at launch of HMCC, but rather a month later.
Below we see that Cairo Station is being loaded up to play. This is an example of the new graphics. Much more contrast!In the image below you can see at near left center a skull. Yep, that’s one of the ones for you to find in Halo 2 Anniversary.Dual wielding is BACK! Well, it’s in Halo 2 Anniversary anyway. (And Halo 3)

There will be more things revealed by 343 in the coming months regarding Halo the Master Chief Collection. For instance they’ve remade 6 classic maps from Halo 2. One of which was shown during the Microsoft presentation. That being Ascension.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this slice of the HMCC’s (Halo Master Chief Collection) menus and a few of the campaign newly skinned graphics.

If you’ve got any thoughts on these, let me know by replying below!

-Sal

I knew today was going to be a great Halo day…

Posted on 06/09/2014 by Sal

I already knew today was going to be a great day for Halo. In fact, I got advanced acknowledgement of it from a receipt the day before:

I was number customer number 117 at the sandwich shop within the place. So this was my Halo In Real Life HIRL moment! LOL

-Sal

Halo 5 Guardians E3 2014 trailer screenshot breakdown.

Posted on 06/09/2014 by Sal

Okay, I’ve had a little time to get some screenshots from the trailer to break it down a little for you good folks.

The sequence opens with this shot of an arena in space.
The lights come on.
The scoring screens light up. Will that happen in the game???
Below we see one of the Red’s gloves. Does that look armored to you? Partially. Seems more like a leather glove though.
So below we see one of the Blue’s reloading his weapon.
Not the emblem on his chest as seen below highlighted by a red circle. I wonder if this is an emblem you can pick?

The AR is back. You can tell by the ammo count on it.

Note below that the same emblem seen on the chest is also on the helmet.
You can see it in the red circle on the right. Also note the number ‘8’ on his helmet.
An emblem on the Red’s helmet.
And a number ‘5’ as well. Recurring theme here.

Now at this point, I’m thinking this is just a base set of armor, much like the Warrior armor of Halo 4’s promotional trailers. This armor looks a lot like the Recruit armor of Halo 4.
Reds going to match up against Blues.
Again note the number ‘2’. Now on the shoulder. So are these uniform throughout? Will every Red team be 1-4 and Blue team 5-8? Or are those also emblems that we can choose? Curious.

The next few pics show the Reds being thrust into the arena via lifts.Will that be how we enter each map? Or is this just special for the trailer???

Now let’s looks at the “new” abilities shown in the trailer.

Below that looks very much like Thrust. You can tell by the blue jet streams coming from the Red’s back. That’s not new. Hmm?

Now below a Spartan was running the did a Power Slide to come to a top. So is this Sprint or a Power Slide? If it is a power slide, it doesn’t seem much like an ability. Then again, is will give you a moment of cover if you do it right, as seen above.

The next five are a sequence of what I’m dubbing a ‘Power Slam’. Yes, those blue jets are still there, but the action used by the Red is much different. It’s not lateral but vertical.

Love those particle effects above. Also note how the surrounding Blues go flying from the slam.Great stuff. I can’t wait to see these talked about more by 343. I’d like a clearer definition of what these abilities are and what their names are.

What is your take on them? Let me know by replying below.

-Sal

The Spirit of Fire podcast E3 2014 edition!

Posted on 06/09/2014 by Sal

We recorded this shortly after the reveal of the Master Chief collection. It would have been done LIVE, but I had some technical issues. Those being I had WAY too many windows open. 4 live streams, the blog, twitter, Waypoint and more….My computer just couldn’t handle all the Halo goodness. The program I use to record crashed, so we had to record after. Unfortunately that meant that Martin one of my co-hosts wouldn’t be on as it was already about 2am his time in Australia.

However, my co-host and long-time friend Zach was with me. We talk for about 45 minutes regarding the Master Chief Collection. Here is is about 5 hours after and I’ve got SO much more to talk about. But I’ve left that to blog articles, preceding this one and forthcoming.

In the meantime, listen here:

SoF ep 11 E3-2014

Or download and listen later here:

SoF ep 11 E3-2014

And don’t forget you can always catch us through iTunes. Search the podcast section for Spirit of Fire.

-Sal

No armor abilities in Halo 5 Guardians?

Posted on 06/09/2014 by Sal

According to Frank O’Conner from a post on NeoGAF, he states the following:

Hmm, I know of several Halo fans that will be VERY happy to hear this. I hope Frank/343 expound upon what they mean by this. Or if this is just the straight up statement. No Armor Abilities.