Louis Wu - Thanks! Pleasure to catch up with you too. :)

serpx - Well, we'll see. I'm sure there's going to be a whole lot of new discussion material turning up very soon, and possibly a new generation of speculators. Rampant speculation can't possibly get old! I don't think I'll be playing Destiny - in fact, I've stopped playing anything these days, and with PhD coursework and assistantship work coming up I may not have the time. Nevertheless, I'm curious to see how the story goes about. I came across that old thread where Hawaiian Pig, Evil Otto and Narcogen discuss story creation from the point of view of fans and the company, and I find myself in agreement with Narcogen on this kind of thing. As you might imagine, my "rampant speculation" days are over and I'm no longer as obsessive as I used to be.

Avateur - Hi! Glad to see you too! I popped into DBO - and yes, that place is pretty hot right now. I'm interested to see how that turns out. I saw the H4 story criticism and quite a lot of it sticks - of course, after seeing Narcogen's post on "How to still care about Halo", I realize that while 343's take might be disappointing, it was not neccessarily bad but rather the result of a very different vision for the Halo series. It's really a matter of perception here. Oh, and I don't think I'll be sticking around - I'll be dropping in occasionally, but I'm quite likely to be swamped with classes and work when September rolls around. Real life, as always, takes priority. :)

Rockslider and Stephen Loftus - Well, you've guessed the "away from Halo" part right. I'm still one of your Youtube subscribers, though, and I have dropped in a couple of times to satisfy my Great Grunty Thirst! (The poor critters were character change casualties as far back as H2, sadly) Sorry to hear about your 360 going kaput. Well, perhaps I'm being rather self-conscious about these things. I've done quite a bit of introspection over the past few years. It's all water under the bridge, anyway. :)

Gravemind - I've got a couple of nits to pick with you. ;) I'd been coming infrequently in 2008 and barely popped in a handful of times in 2009 and 2010, so my last meaningful visit here was in 2007 (well, 2010 if you count the armor debate I had with Stephen Loftus). But for most practical purposes it's 7 years, it sure feels like 7 years and besides, 7 is se7en!

Cody Miller and hunt3r - Yep, sure is quiet here. Hmm...I could actually get into a really long discussion with you guys about Halo as a phenomenon and the nature of storytelling, having been into that sort of stuff a bit lately. There's a whole lot of truth in what you've said. "Lovingly forgotten" sure does desribe Halo 1 and quite a few other things from that age for me!