Halo 3 had a pretty great ad campaign, including a short film by District 9 director Neil Blomkamp showing the “Landfall” of Master Chief after the events of Halo 2. Halo 3 ODST followed suit last fall. Then this spring there was a Halo Reach beta test commerical. Yes, an ad for the beta.

But this one takes the cake. Not as deep on story, but its full of action. Its not hard to imagine a Halo movie now after all this.

You can see more abstract shorts on Remember Reach.

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You might be reaching a point of unrecoverable fatigue with the deluge of preview footage involving Halo Reach.

But just watch this video once. You’ll recognize that voice, and suddenly this story starts to get pulled in a direction you might not have expected.

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A few words on screen, no dialog and a little peek of action, all set to new music from Marty O’Donnell.

Noble Team’s last stand on the doomed planet Reach begins September 14.

Of course we expected to see the map editor Forge come back in Reach, as it became one of the most popular elements of Halo 3. What I don’t think anyone expected was for it to be as big as Bungie has now made it. Watch the above video, you’ll see they took two new maps as well as remakes of Halo CE’s Blood Gulch, Halo 2’s Santuary, and Halo 2’s Ascension and put them all into one amazing space.

The rules for Forge have been completely re-written and its now much easier to build custom maps and spaces as well as game types: like a version of King Of The Hill where the hill as a rocket launching Warthog.

Bungie has posted their weekly update in advance of ComiCon. Its a pretty big info dump, reasoning they’d rather get out ahead of the players taking cell phone pics and just let people see the real deal. One of the images they posted is the “Initial Armory Inventory” and it represents the custom options for Multiplayer and Firefight game modes. Bungie has been championing the options for custom characters since day one, but this image shows a few people you didn’t expect.

Well, you wouldn’t expect them if you didn’t see the banner image on this post. From left to right thats Buck, Sgt Johnson, Cortana, and Spartan 117 himself: Master Chief. Allowing those hardened Marines to drop into Firefight is one thing, but Cortana comes out of nowhere. Will we have a playable glowing blue AI skin? Its that too weird?

How do we know this isn’t just a dump of artwork accidentally left in with new elements? Steve Downes, who provided the voice of Master Chief over 3 Halo games, has said he’ll be back in Reach.

Over the course of E3, Halo: Reach developer Bungie did mention in interviews that the Firefight game mode would return. They even said matchmaking would be part of the experience and there would be lots of customization options.
What they didn’t show us was the game in action, so here you go. Grunts, Jackyls, Brutes, and Elites.

Also: the “BlackEye” Skull is gone. Hoorah!

Its the last day of E3, and all the publishers, studios, businessmen, designers, and artists have played their best hand of the year. There is no comparison in any other industry. Imagine if Hollywood showed a trailer for every movie of the next year on the same weekend. Thats crazy! And yet its E3.

In that spirit, those of us who follow at home don’t get hands on impressions, we just get 2 minute snippets of the games we’ll be playing from now until next E3. Who had the best?
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It’s sweeps month! So many cancellations already announced: FlashForward, Law & Order, Scrubs, HEROES. But many shows also picked up! V, The Cape, and Conan O’Brien’s new TBS show! Plus, Iron Man 2 and Halo: Reach “Pre-Season 1” in Cool Beans

Direct Link: Powetcast Episode 33: No More Heroes

Audio Netcast Details
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(Were you still watching Heroes? WHY? Will you miss it? What about the majority of ABC’s 2009 lineup getting canned? Leave your thoughts below!)

Show notes after the jump!

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