Bungie on Halo 3 interface

It may have been a short week for our independent friends in the Americaland, but Bungie's diligent webmasters still found the time to update us on the latest in Halo 3 development - and to reveal that the Halo graphic novel is now finished.

This week's Halo 3 focus has been getting the new user interface in place. In other words, the menus. Alright it's not exactly "implementing the Master Chief's pet monkey sidekick", but it's still likely to make a difference to Halo veterans.

"As it stands now, the interface is designed to make it very simple to get to a 'lobby' and make all necessary changes from there," says web-time Frankie, "so that you can customize your experience, appearance, and more importantly, really specific game types from anywhere."

This is a response to a problem with the Halo 2 interface, Frankie says, where it was impossible for players to set up custom games with all the options they wanted using the "Quick Options" selection. Apparently you can also change you controller settings from anywhere at any time, too.

"The problem with adapting to a new UI is the problem of familiarity," Frankie says of his initiation. "You expect things to behave the way they did in Halo 2 and when they don't, it's easy to think, 'Oh, that's broken,' when in fact, something has technically been fixed. And the sign of a good UI is that it only takes a couple of tries to get used to it, and that everything is found in its logical place."

And what's this about the graphic novel? Well, with online previews already available and the book due out this month, Bungie reveals that the final work is now done - and even has some pictures and art.

"Lorraine just got back from Roanoke, VA where she signed off on the colors and print quality for the book. They literally watch it run off the press. Lorraine stayed up all night making recommendations and checking pages, stayed in a craptacular hotel, and finally got one hour of sleep," says Frankie.

For more on the Halo 3 interface, the book, and of course the latest on Mister Chief, head over to the Bungie weekly update.