Xbox 360 Fanboy

Again we've stumbled across some new Xbox Live Marketplace content prior to any announcement and this time it's a brand new Halo 3 ViDOC. W00t!

The new Journey's End ViDOC is a 753MB download (only available in HD) and we presume to be available worldwide to all Xbox Live subscribers via the XBLM. In essence, it's a fifteen minute introduction to key Halo characters and a brief overview of what events occurred in both Halo and in Halo 2. And, since it is a ViDOC, it's sprinkled with the patented Bungie charm we've all come to love. So, if you're rather new to Halo or just want cliff notes on what has taken place over the past few years as it pertains to the game, then give the new ViDOC a watch. If, at the very least, it'll leave you salivating and want to pick up and play Halo 3 again.

Over on Bungie.net, the Bungie gang (yes, they're actually a real gang) just released a brand new pre-launch ViDOC that was promised a long time back and this time we get learned about the Forge and saved films in full color video motion! The ViDOC teaches and discusses both of these new Halo 3 features and should get you feeling confident enough to jump in head first without a life jacket when Halo 3 releases next week. You can download the how-to ViDOC online in a WMV flavor over at Bungie.net or off the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Also, they've posted a little more boring text version of the how-to saved films stuff on Bungie.net, so you can check that out too. And since we're talking about all this Halo 3 how-to stuff, you might want to make your way over to the newly posted Forge advanced techniques article which compliments the Forge intro and objects tutorials quite well. You've got a lot of reading, watching and learning to do before next Tuesday fanboys. Study up, because we're only days away.

[Thanks, MokeUSA]

Bungie's own Frankie jumped over to the NeoGAF forums to clear up some speculation floating around the new Halo 3 vidoc that was released this morning. In Frankie's post, he re-emphasizes that all the multiplayer gameplay footage was taken from the alpha build and that it is not representative of how pretty the game looks saying that,

"All of the water you saw, for example, is placeholder. No decorators are in those maps. The frame rates are all over the place. Some of that footage has correct lighting, some of it doesn't. All of that footage is olde."

He also goes on to explain that the new bubble shield and trip mine are two of the X button's deployments and are not treated as grenades as some thought. So, the beta will be graphically prettier, the frame rate will much more consistent, and the X button does indeed control the bubble shield and trip mine. Not too shabby.

[Via HBO]

Now that the latest Halo 3 "ViDoc" has been released and allowed to simmer for a few hours, Bungie has responded to some of the most common questions and concerns associated with it. Chief among these questions is of course the graphics. Already announced as being placeholder graphics, many still found the video to be lacking -- in some cases barely above Halo 2's visual quality. In response, Bungie says that essentially nothing in the video represents the actual look of Halo 3, save for a few very brief snippets. Furthermore, all footage in the video is several months old, as that is when they started creating the documentary.