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.

From Rooster Teeth:

It is with the utmost pride and pleasure that we declare the start of our new series, Red vs Blue:Reconstruction. The Sponsors are watching the extended cut of the episode right now in the forum, and the final cut will be available here just as soon as the data gods bestow their favors upon us. (UPDATE: It’s up now. Look up!) That means we’re encoding and uploading. We plan to release RvB:re on Mondays all throughout the Summer, so please stay tuned.

We’re pretty excited!  The first episode is really well done (we would expect no less from RT), and I think it’s safe to say that this series will be just as popular, if not more so than the original RvB!

Bungie has released a trailer for their upcoming Legendary Map Pack for Halo 3, and this time, no one’s pulling an April Fools on anyone else (sheesh… I am April Fooled out). You can grab an HD copy directly from them if you’d like, or from the Xbox Live Marketplace eventually. We’re really excited about the launch of the three new Maps, Blackout, Avalanche, and Ghost Town.

Remember, you can grab em on live starting April 15th! Mark your calendars!

The flash video appears to be down, so I recommend using this link to the Bungie.net story and downloading the videos from there.

The rest of the series, and other videos will all be available on Xbox.com/believe, and the Xbox Live Marketplace tomorrow, the 14th.

The central element that much of the integrated marketing campaign centers on is a painstakingly accurate replication of a key moment from a climactic battle set in the “Halo” universe. At over 1200 square feet, reaching a height over 12 feet above the ground and with each handcrafted human and Covenant figure standing eight to twelve inches high, the diorama was large enough to fill an entire studio…

Shooting the campaign took several days as the individual soldier’s stories were told, and as the camera spanned the landscape, finally resting on the mountain top where Master Chief appears to have been conquered by the Covenant enemy…or so it would seem. Viewers quickly realize that there is much more of the story that’s yet to be told – and the game will tell all.

Nice little write up over at TeamXbox.

Phantoms were originally introduced in Halo 2, replacing the “Tuning fork” drop ship from Halo 1. These new vehicles had several powerful plasma turrets, making battles very difficult in some instances (especially while fighting off the enemies coming down from the ship). Now we can get the drop on them first!

Finally… We can actually take them out before they hit the ground!

Seems like there are kiosks to actually play the game (or a demo) in some places around the world. We’d love to see some more events with playable demos here in the states!

There is commentary throughout the clip, but it’s pretty difficult to hear what the speaker is saying over the game volume. If anyone can find a transcript, that would be great!

Oh, and the Arbiter (presumably) is in this video, making his first appearance in any game footage so far (we believe anyways). Also worthy of mentioning is that Objectives will now appear at the bottom of the screen rather than at the top left as in the past Halo games.

halo3campaign.wmv

The demonstration is given by none other than Bungie’s Brian Jarrard, who walks the press through the ins and outs of the wonders of Forge. Perhaps one of the coolest bits of info pulled from the video is that Bungie will be keeping track of what players are doing in Forge. If one particular map configuration works really well, Bungie can easily incorporate it into matchmaking for all to play.

We’ve talked about Forge a bit in the past but this is probably the best video out there so far which actually shows the new feature in action. We’ve heard from some players in the Epsilon Beta that this is actually their favorite part of the game now, offering a brand new and innovative way to play online with your friends.

It is shaky cam, but it’s better than nothing at all we suppose. We’d love to see these matches broadcasted in HD Versions from [tag]Bungie[/tag], but I guess we will have to wait.

It kind of reminds me of a shortened version of [tag]Halo PC[/tag]’s Gyrophobia.