I can't wait to see someone run by who has spent 10 hours on the moon and has a retro spacesuit for their accomplishments, as opposed to other more rounded and versed players.

I love Halo, but its mysteries feel a lot less mysterious these days.

In my opinion, the reason Halo feels much less mysterious has everything to do with the handover from the storytellers at Bungie to the storytellers at 343.

The folks at 343 have their own directions that they seem to want to take the Halo universe's fiction, and because of that, they've revealed things with clarity that were previously vague via Bungie, while still leaving other things, some of them new, as vague or mysterious.

Makes you wonder whether what they revealed was actually what Bungie had dreamed of... whereas Bungie clearly states 3 times that Forerunners ARE humans, albeit a different kind of humans (I essentially imagined them as humans "idealized" in every respect: biologically, philosophically, spiritually, scientifically), 343 seems to be working in a Halo universe where that's not the case (though I haven't gotten to read Silentium yet, but it's sitting on my night stand patiently waiting).

If you leave off at Reach, where we have this "birthright from an ancient civilization", then I think our minds are still free to wander and wonder about what it would be like to travel back in time and interact with this ancient, graceful civilization.

Anywho, all of that is ancillary. I asked what I asked here because it only made sense to: the worst they could do would be to say nothing--whereas the best that could have come out of my asking would have been answers or at least a "Yes, we know exactly what you're talking about, and no, we're not talking about that yet. ;)"

I can't complain about not having the answers if I didn't even bother to ask, right? :)

Thanks for the response, Kermit.

Mostly it just has "Louis Wu Claude Errera" in a big heart with an arrow through it.

lol - that's even creepier than your 'I won't touch' comment! :)

Haha, I should probably tone down the creepiness, otherwise people will run when they meet me in real life :)

Nah, our attention span is too short. We won't remember. :)

Mostly it just has "Louis Wu Claude Errera" in a big heart with an arrow through it.

lol - that's even creepier than your 'I won't touch' comment! :)

Haha, I should probably tone down the creepiness, otherwise people will run when they meet me in real life :)

Oh we know he doodles DBO usernames on his trapper keeper.

Mostly it just has "Louis Wu Claude Errera" in a big heart with an arrow through it.

lol - that's even creepier than your 'I won't touch' comment! :)

Oh we know he doodles DBO usernames on his trapper keeper.

Mostly it just has "Louis Wu Claude Errera" in a big heart with an arrow through it.

Were questions about the iPhone/smartphone app shown in the Out Of Darkness trailer part of the "We're not talking about that" section?

Yes.

I was suprised no details have come out about that yet. I'd love to know exactly what the use cases for that are.

WIll one of those things looking to pull you away from the main objective include competitive modes? Or will competitive involve a more controlled environment like going to some Arena in the city or selecting an option from the menu?

We've yet to detail out anything about competitive mp (dodge!), but I will say that the design pillar "Activities for Every Mood" is predicated on player choice. "Pull" is likely too strong a word to describe whatever falls into the bucket of "those things" here. "Entice" or "offer" might be better.

Well consider me excited to be enticed by some offers

I believe there was a comment about trying to remove almost any UI (in regards to a prompt asking you to approve a public event).

There's UI to announce the Public Event, but no loading or lobby to sit through. We're not actively trying to eliminate all UI from the game (Hey, Candland!), but rather trying to ensure that as many actions and activities as possible feel woven into the narrative of the world itself. UI plays a huge roll in that obviously, and in fact, down the line I want to show it off as a reveal in and of itself. Which isn't a promise, but a personal preference. ;)

Sorry for the language I used, UI is one of my favorite things about Bungie games and I've always appreciated the care the team has put into making the experience as smooth user friendly as possible while providing tons of power under the hood. Heck, I was super pumped when Candland was one of my ODST firefight buddies for the FLAG event so I could pick his brain for questions.

Ever since I built an XNA game and got 2 XBoxes to find each other and join a game, I've wanted to build or play a game that made the matching seamless. Journey and Dark Souls among others fulfilled part of the promise of that concept and I'm looking forward to enjoying Bungie's take on a seamless matchmaking adventure.

I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how you'll handle some issues that I've discovered in my design process, how to keep the universe persistent, what happens when more than the intended amount of users want to goto the same location, and how to balance the progress while matching people efficiently. Suffice it to say, if there weren't so many challenges to bringing this idea to life, the result wouldn't be so satisfying.

Thanks for answering those questions Bungie, one of the reasons I've always loved you is the respect you show your fans.

You should hear all the shit DeeJ says about you when you're not listening!

Oh we know he doodles DBO usernames on his trapper keeper.

Thanks for letting me gush a bit.

Will someone being on my friends list (or PS4's real-life friends list) affect matchmaking?

I love Butcher's anecdote about seeing a friend in a public space. Assuming that many of my friends play regularly, how likely is that to happen when hundreds of thousands of guardians roam the solar system?

Are there any plans (maybe something already discussed with Bungie, or just an idea for the future) for the questions that were cut out due to "not speaking about that right now" to be saved and presented again at a future point in time assuming the questions aren't addressed when further reveals occur?

No current plans that I'm aware of, but I still have the list of questions saved. I imagine any future interview opportunities we come across will prompt us to ask the community for a new round of questions anyways. :)