Halo 2 E3 Video Unleashed
By SketchFactor
Thursday, June 12th, 2003, 7:08 PM
On August 8, 2002 Bungie broke the vow of silence and officially announced to the world that we were indeed working on a sequel to Halo. Then in September of last year, the Halo 2 announce trailer (if you haven't seen it yet, stop what you're doing and get up to speed!) was released giving the first glimpse of Master Chief as he embarked on his most critical mission yet - protect Earth from the Covenant threat.
As the trailer concludes, we see Chief jumping out of an airlock, on his way to a Covenant vessel in orbit over a war-torn Earth. From the looks of the explosions taking place below, our planet appears to be facing it's darkest hour. The demo that was shown at E3 last month picks up slightly after the original trailer leaves off. The Covenant are at our front door and the UNSC Marines are fighting for their lives in the streets of New Mombasa . Luckily the UNSC forces have a few new tricks up their sleeves... but then again, so do the Covenant. I don't want to spoil the fun for those of you who haven't seen it yet but suffice it to say that the Chief is called upon to save the day and "liberally apply boot to ass."
Look ma, no hands
One thing that may not be apparent to anyone not able to see the demo live is the fact that it isn't just a movie. Well, it is now, but originally it wasn't. Unlike the Halo 2 announcement trailer, which consisted of pure in-game rendered cinematics, this latest release is an actual demo. A real-life Bungie guy was actually playing through the game live. Everything from the original live demo has been captured in this handy dandy video version. Why does this matter? Well, it just means that what you're seeing is bona fide 100% gameplay. As Sarge says, there's no "smoke and mirrors bulls#*t" here.
How'd they do that!?
In the coming weeks, Bungie.net will be running a series of behind-the-scenes features with various members of the development team about the creation of this demo. Each week I'll be speaking with a different group to find out how it all came together and hopefully get a taste of what more we can look forward to. Be sure to check back at Bungie.net for the complete "Making of the Halo 2 Demo" saga as well as a whole slew of Halo 2 goodies such as desktop wallpapers, concept art, story boards and screenshots. Also, if you missed it earlier this week, be sure to check out the tale of Bungie's intelligence gathering mission with the U.S. Special Forces!
Show me the movie!
Ok, enough already! I'm sure you're dying to see the movie by now. There are two flavors of video to choose - a Windows Media Player 9 version (complete with 5.1 surround sound) and a Quicktime version. Every site should have the WMP9 video. Mirror sites with a Quicktime version are indicated below. Please note that the video itself is close to 9 minutes long and the file size is BIG (over 150 megs depending on which version you get). It could take quite a while for your download to complete. Each of these mirror sites has different capacities so if you can't connect to one, it's probably full so you should wait or try another. Also, for those of you with slower connections, a few sites offer a Bit Torrent version which is a type of peer-to-peer transfer service.
And without further ado, here's the list of mirror sites where you can download it for yourself... Enjoy!
Halo 2 E3 2003 Video Download Mirrors
note: We will update this list throughout the day as more mirror sites come online.
