Podtacular

In lieu of no live podcast last week, we are please to have another interview, this time featuring Matty McDee, one of the head moderators of the Halo subreddit. With over 600k members and at least 2000 online at any given moment, it’s certainly one of the larger Halo communities. While the Halo subreddit may be a well-known entity, it wasn’t always that way and really didn’t “exist” until the Halo: Reach era of the franchise. In our interview with Matty, we learn a bit behind the history of the subreddit, what it’s main content is, and discuss some of our hopes for Halo Infinite later this year.

It’s been a couple weeks since we were last behind the microphones, which gives us a chance to dive into quite a bit of Halo news and community updates. A new Community Update, Spotlight, Canon Fodder and Ask 343 was certainly enough for us to dig our teeth into. The community has been doing well also. We won’t have a live show this next week, but we will have another episode with our next guest. Tune in next week to see who that is.

As promised, 343 delivers another monthly Halo Infinite update and this issue delights us with breathtaking views and vistas of Zeta Halo. Right out the gate, it’s evident that the visual state of the game has changed drastically since the campaign game play demo last summer. To learn more about how the world of Zeta Halo is being brought to life, we get to hear from the art and world teams working on the project with some final thoughts from Joe Staten to round out a shorter, but certainly impactful update.

Last week while we were learning about the wonderful world of LASO difficulty, we got a new community update bringing some exciting news for the next season of content for Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Not only are we getting our first look at some of the community’s most requested features, but we’re also getting our first map from Halo Online being introduced into the Halo 3 engine in MCC. While customizations are a nice addition, a whole new play-space is something new and will hopefully be a fresh addition to the collection.

In the world of playing Halo competitively, there’s one challenge that’s often not thought of. It’s not even multiplayer, but rather the Halo campaign on legendary with all skulls on: LASO. It is no small task to complete to as it’s the most difficult campaign experience in Halo. To get the rundown on what LASO is and all the intricacies on how it’s played and the origins of the difficulty, we have some veterans in developing the strategies and exploring the game with the enhance difficulty: ProAceJOKER, Silver and Mythic Tyrant. If you’re interested in learning more about how to get involved with the LASO and speed running communities, give them a follow.

Another month closer to Halo Infinite, another podcast. Not a lot to cover this week, but it’s been a while since we took a look at the latest updates from fan projects. Not unexpectedly, there’s not a lot of updates from the games and mods over the past few months, but we’ve got Season 5 in MCC and the latest community spotlight to hold us over.

Our first Infinite update of the year has dropped on Halo Waypoint, and while it doesn’t contain any groundbreaking revelations, the Sandbox team dove into the pillars that drive their work to make the next Halo experience. With the game coming out later this year, we’re lined up for monthly updates from the studio with the next one about bringing the world of Zeta Halo to life. If you haven’t had a chance to read the update, we highly recommend you do. Also, DJ has been given an incredible opportunity that unfortunately conflicts with our normal recording day and time. For the foreseeable future, his presence will be sporadic or absent until his schedule frees up again. In the meantime, give him some love on Twitter and Twitch at DJBluePDX.

It’s our first update show of the year as our first two shows featured some community guests who we did not want to rob the spotlight from. Waypoint’s first community spotlight of the year features some very talented community creations and several other interesting milestones related to Halo happened recently. We’re still waiting for the first Infinite news drop of the year, so we’re looking to more guest appearances for the upcoming shows until then. If you’ve got some suggestions, please let us know. Also, thanks to CIA391 and his work over on Halopedia.org documenting the Halo: Reach Clicktacular promo and providing us some end of the show entertainment.

This week we didn’t do a live show, but we have a great interview with Covie Canon for your enjoyment. Creating his own fan, in-universe character, he explains the lore of the Covenant races through Kaidon Nakai ‘Vodar. In the interview, Covie Canon explains how he came up with the character, what fascinates him about the Covenant species and his hopes for what we’ll set to see with the Banished in Halo Infinite.

We’ve finally arrived (we hope); the year of Halo Infinite! Coming off our holiday hiatus, we look forward to the fall when we expect to finally get to experience the latest installment to the Halo franchise. While there’s still a lot we don’t know yet, that leaves plenty of room for us to talk about the things we think we’ll see leading up to the release and new features we hope will make it in with the delay. Helping us kick off the new year is Shyway, joining us on this episode to talk about his involvement with competitive Halo and his thoughts on how Halo Infinite can breathe new life into the competitive Halo scene. As an analyst and caster, he has a lot of insight into the nuance of competitive play and what sets Halo apart from other games. Give him a follow on Twitter, Twitch and YouTube.

As we enter the holiday season, we find ourselves wrapping up a crazy year and certainly an emotional roller coaster for many in the community. Despite worldly pandemics and game delays, there are a few nice experiences we got as Halo fans. Among the hundreds of responses we got to our Halo Wars 2 prize pack give away, MCC coming to PC and including Halo 3: ODST Firefight were large highlights alongside the Halo Infinite gameplay reveal back at the Xbox Games Showcase in July. Lastly, we’ve had such a supportive community as we launched our Patreon and continue to grow our follower and subscriber base on Twitch for our live streams. We hope everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays as we look forward to 2021 and the launch of Halo Infinite!

Winding down a crazy year of 2020 and we’re hit with the largest piece of Halo Infinite news since the Xbox Games Showcase back in July. The studio took to Halo Waypoint with their latest blog regarding the state of Halo Infinite development to share their thoughts on the response from the game play demo and the community’s concerns over the graphical fidelity and armor coating system. Needless to day, there’s some exciting things coming with Infinite based on the few words from Joe Staten and the interviews with the art and live teams in the studio. Give the update a good read over and put some of those fears at ease. Also, for Fortnite fans, Master Chief also dropped in there during The Game Awards with Blood Gulch as a creative environment in the game.

After a week of for Thanksgiving, it’s time to see what’s happened in the world of Halo. While Halo 4 has completed the Master Chief Collection on PC, 343 isn’t done yet with bringing more bug fixes and features next year. With the ongoing support and Infinite slated to release in 2021, it should be an interesting year for Halo fans. A new Halo novel was announced, Point of Light, and we got the final installment of the ONI archives. Make sure you check out Haruspis’ blog and Halo Canon’s video summing up the ONI Comms Officer’s conversations.

One of the oldest communities, even older than Podtacular has the mission of being the knowledge source for everything in the Halo universe. Tackling such a large feat is Halopedia, a fan-managed wiki that encapsulates so many facets of the franchise that you’re bound to run across something you didn’t know. Two of the staff members over at Halopedia, CIA391 and Dab1001, join us for this interview where we talk about the history of the site and community, how it helps ensure accuracy of the information users add, how squishy the universe lore actually is, and a secret little function of the website that they decided to share with our listeners. If you catch the tip at the end of the show, let us know what you think of the effect.

Halo 4 has finally landed on PC joining the Master Chief collection and for a game that has really kicked off a lot of how we got involved with the Halo community, it’s only fitting that we talk about what really speaks to us about the game. It introduced new story telling and features to the franchise that has helped shape the last decade of Halo and while no game is perfect, it brought a lot of things we hold dear to our Halo experience. We’re excited to see new players get to experience the franchise in a whole new way as PC players continue to fill in and experience these later Halo games first hand.