All of the Mythic Map Pack Skulls have been found in Halo 3!

This morning, we completed the search for Halo 3 Skulls by finding the Longshore Skull, Citadel Skull, and Heretic Skull in the new Mythic Maps.

The Mythic Maps will be released on September 22nd with the release of Halo 3: ODST. If you want to find the skulls yourself, do not click on the links above.

We’ll have more updates soon with additional information from ODST!

They are all much easier to obtain than the ordinary skulls from the campaign. Simply load up the map in forge, and you’ll be able to get most of the Mythic map pack skulls in less than a minute.

We even put together a video of the skulls and ways to get them. Enjoy.

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?

Bungie will be announcing a new game with a video teaser on Thursday, September 25th through the Xbox Live Marketplace and Bungie.net.

Members of the Bungie.net forums A member of the Bungie.net Forums found a notification that was not intended to be revealed until the anniversary of Halo 3. The notification (which will seemingly pop-up when you boot up Halo 3 sometime on Thursday), simply states that the teaser for the next Bungie game is available on the XBL Marketplace and Bungie.net.

The messages were quickly taken down, and a countdown timer has been reinitiated on Bungie.net. This same countdown appeared during E3, but was later canceled by Microsoft. The timer currently counts down to 7:07 a.m. PST.

30 new achievements were added to Halo 3 today on Xbox.com including the 6 new Halo 3 skulls we mentioned in a recent post.

Among the achievements listed on Xbox.com are the Assembly Skull, Citadel Skull, Heretic Skull, Longshore Skull, Orbital Skull, and the Sandbox Skull. Each unlocked Skull achievement will tack on an extra 25 points to Gamer Score, and an extra achievement for finding all of the skulls will add another 25 points for a grand total of 175GS.

It’s still a mystery as to how these skulls will be implemented, but it would seem as if they might be integrated into a new series of maps dubbed “Mythic” based on achievement descriptions on Xbox.com. Bungie has remained silent in regards to these additional achievments so far.

Despite all this, the talk in the Halo Community has largely centered around two recent featured postings on Bungie.net, featuring the Super Intendent that we saw back during E3. In the most recent posting from tonight, folks were left baffled by a vague and interesting dialogue.

Here’s to hoping we find out more about all of this Tomorrow when TU2 goes live!

According to rumors started at PAX, the build shown to folks who attended contained several achievements that were not a part of the original Halo 3 release.

30 New Achievements to be exact.

Among the newly added achievements are Six New Skulls. That’s right. Six New Halo 3 Skulls. Whether or not they’ll be like traditional skulls is still up in the air (especially considering that these new skulls seem to be associated with multiplayer maps rather than single player maps) — and there are no details on whether or not they’ll be used in campaign mode to add special effects to ordinary gameplay.

Whatever the case may be, we’ve updated our Halo 3 Skulls page with the new skulls, and will be on the search for them as soon as they are made available. During our search for the IWHBYD Skull, we ended up with over 600 posts in a massive hunt for the location of the best-hidden item we’ve ever seen.

Will you be there when we search for these skulls?

1. Heretic Skull
2. Citadel Skull
3. Assembly Skull
4. Sandbox Skull
5. Orbital Skull
6. Longshore Skull

Something strange is going on over at Bungie, and it’s definitely attracting some attention. Based on a countdown, it looks like we might learn more in just less than 2 days.

Considering the Microsoft Press conference just started at E3, could this have anything to do with the rumored new Halo project?

Arguably Halo: CE’s most popular map, Chill Out was put on display last night by Bungie at the MLG San Diego event, the second stop on the 2008 MLG Pro Circuit. The new map – dubbed ‘Cold Storage’ – was displayed by Luke Smith and Shishka in an exhibition match against two MLG stars. The boys from Bungie made no mention of the intended release date.

MLG has kindly hosted some images from the event. Follow this link for the gallery.

We’ll be keeping you updated on the new maps as they are announced, and we might even help a few lucky readers pay for the pack.

However, we have found a few things that have helped us play [tag]Halo 3[/tag] (among other titles such as Call of Duty 4) during the holiday season. You may want to at least TRY some of these things before you give up hope of playing online.

• Clear your [tag]Xbox 360 Cache[/tag] – It’s really simple to do. In the Xbox 360 Dashboard, go to the System Blade, and then go to memory. While hovering over the Hard drive, press “Y”. When brought to the next screen, DO NOT SELECT EITHER OPTION, but instead enter in the following combination: X, X, Left Bumper, Right Bumper, X, X. If entered correctly, you should be able to clear your 360’s cache.
• If you’re being disconnected from games, or if you’re unable to join games and invite players to your games, you might want to try a real simple fix that has worked a few times for us. While in Halo 3 (lobby/menu/anywhere…) Click your Guide button, and Press X to sign out. Once signed out, sign back in. Give it a moment to load your settings and friends list. For some reason this seems to cure problems with not being able to invite friends 1 out of 3 times.
• Call 1-800-4-MyXbox. I’d use this one as a last resort. All of Xbox support representatives seem to actually have very little knowledge about the 360, or [tag]Xbox Live[/tag]. Instead, they sound like they’re just reading standard responses from a script 99.9% of the time. That said, they usually can help you with some basic problems you might be encountering. I personally haven’t been helped by them, but who knows… maybe you’ll find out that your NAT settings aren’t set to Open or something…
• Speaking of NAT, make sure your [tag]NAT[/tag] is set to OPEN! You can find out if your NAT is set to open by running a network test from the System blade. If its status is set otherwise, you’ll need to find out how to properly configure your network (or you’ll need to check to see if you’re even running on compatible hardware).

Other than that, you’re basically just going to have to wait it out. If you’ve found that anything else has worked for you, please be sure to post your findings here!

Yes, it is a paid service, and yes, the service is apparently down in many regards (ie: We can’t exactly play). But is it fair to expect a flawless service 100% of the time? Does all the good in Xbox Live make up for this small anomaly?

Online services have problems.  There is no question in that.  Microsoft has done quite a good job overall (I believe) with their [tag]Xbox Live[/tag] service, and the fact that their servers apparently were not ready for 10 Million subscribers doesn’t come as a surprise to me.  They’ve made it pretty clear that they are working on solving the problem through folks like Major Nelson (who also announced how Microsoft is planning to compensate for the downtime), but I think the thing that is becoming bothersome is that this solution is taking quite a while to implement.

It’s important to understand that these sorts of problems can’t just be fixed in a matter of hours.  Server capacity probably has to be GREATLY increased (not just to solve the current situation, but also to prevent this from happening when there are 15 Million, or 20 Million subscribers), and even after all the hardware is setup, it takes time to test these sort of things in order to prevent other problems from developing.

Personally, I’d rather see the service come back online when it’s ready, rather than have some quick mop job on the whole service for a quick fix.  It does suck that we can’t get our daily dosage of Halo, but we are being given a free Xbox Live Arcade game as compensation.

Besides, with all this extra time me might get a chance to explore that strange place outside of the house for a change.