Podtacular: The Unofficial Halo Universe Podcast

On the eve of yet another community 20th anniversary, CMNeir joins the podcast to celebrate the Halo Tricks video that started it all: Tank Pinball. Things take a bit of a turn when one of the Halo Tricks gang, Darkersun, joins and we begin reminiscing the olden days of the Halo community and the social aspect of gaming as a whole. While Halo isn't the only franchise with a variety of experiences and forms of community expression, it was in a unique place to allow things like Halo Tricks to take a hold as a community staple and set the stage for what has led to the strength of today's community.

The last two months has seen a flood of content updates in Halo Infinite, bringing iconic pieces of Halo's past back into the franchise and fans are soaking it up. The community hasn't slowed down either as things wind up for the last Halo Infinite HCS season. We end this episode on a somber note that we'll let you listen in to hear what's changing with the podcast.

On this episode, we interview ArturBloodshot, Halo Forger and fellow Forerunner to Dust Storm. You may know him from several popular Forge creations including the Critical Dewpoint, the Moutain Dew themed forge map included as part of a promotion with 343 Industries back in 2023. He's also on to give us a unique perspective of Halo outside of the English-speaking western culture of gamers representing the Mexican/Latin American region.

A couple of months has passed since our last recording, and while we've been out, the updates to Halo Infinite keep rolling as new modes and community maps make their way into Matchmaking. Dust Storm and Godzilla T finished Gashnor's Cursed Halo and talk about Dust's obsession with making objects fly with rocket grenades.We've taken the step away from Skype now too, so if you have the chance to tune into our streams, we're changing the game a bit to have better audio for podcast and multiple POVs for game streams. Catch us on Twitch and soon YouTube!

Halo Infinite Operations have changed the game again with 50-tier passes lasting a month long, leading to more cosmetics alongside regular content additions. Assault has made its formal introduction to Infinite's multiplayer and we can attest to its nostalgic factor. It certainly seems like Halo's on the upswing after a rocky start.

After a rocky start to the new year, it seems like Halo has some interesting prospects coming to the table with continued content delivery for Halo Infinite and possibly seeing Halo come to other platforms. The community has been a buzz about rumors of a PlayStation and Nintendo release of Halo, which sounds like a huge technical lift for development that's been deprioritized but would also bring in a whole new slew of players. New operations are on the horizon with Assault coming on the next drop along with a live stream detailing plans for upcoming Halo Infinite updates and plans for HCS Season 4 on Halo Infinite.

Well, 2025 is off to a "great" start for Halo as the Digsite team crumbles, a massive leak of Bungie-era Halo content hits the internet, and Halo Studios issuing DMCA take downs of the leaked content. On the flipside, we do have a new operation with some arguably community favorite game modes coming to Infinite. We have a whole year ahead of us and while we don't know what, if any, future game announcements will come this year, let's try to make the best of it.

It's been quite the roller coaster of a year for Halo, with several changes to content update delivery for Infinite; new weapons, maps, Forge additions; Season 2 of the Halo TV Series; HCS Season three; studio rebranding and the list goes on. We had quite a roller coaster of emotion throughout the community, but it looks like we're still cooking and have plenty more Halo to come. Thanks for sticking with us throughout the year as we've been through life and inconsistent schedules.

It's the 20-year anniversary of Halo 2 and with that, the Halo Community and Infinite is celebrating with a new Delta Arena playlist featuring seven Forged Halo 2 maps in matchmaking. Not only did we get new Forge updates along with the Great Journey operation, but a new weapon, the MA5K rifle from the cover of Ghost of Onyx drops in Infinite multiplayer. The LVL 50 LAN hosted by Puckett is also happening during Halo 2's birthday weekend expecting some old names from the Halo competitive scene making a return.

We’re back off the heels of an exciting Halo World Championship seeing a new Champion rise: Space Station Gaming, along with a very exciting first-ever international champion! Among the competitive festivities were of course the Community Stage and booths, but most of all was being among other Halo Fans. Austin and Connor from JumperScape not only joined us for our special from Seattle but hop on this episode to talk about what they’ve been up to and recap the HaloWC 2024 event and announcements for the future of Halo.

It’s our open-mic special from this year’s Halo World Championships talking about this year’s tournament, panels and experiences. We had the pleasure of having JumperScape, OmnicientWolf, Bobby on this year’s live stream with a surprise, hour-long drop from the GOAT, Goldenboy! It’s quite an accomplishment for a competitive series to last 10 years in the industry, twice (the first-time being Halo under Major League Gaming) and we’re excited for the future of Halo and HCS.

The Halo World Championship is only two weeks away, bringing the best Halo talent together from around the world and entertaining fans. Along with Halo Infinite tournaments, there’s Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 5: Guardians tournaments happening as well, opening up probably the most varied tournament experience that we’ve ever seen. The community stage has an excellent line up to experience or watch at home if you can’t make it to Seattle for the event. This is our last planned podcast before Worlds, but Dust Storm hopes to see some of you there!

Community tournaments are a dime a dozen these days in the Halo community, giving players the chance to compete outside the official HCS events, but for those of us, more seasoned players, our skills aren’t as sharp, which is where our guest comes in. Sports fan, teacher and Halo streamer, CardinalRedbird, has put together a series of Boomer and Boomer vs. Zoomer tournaments, offering some unique takes on tournament rules and putting to test the old adage of “age and treachery overcomes youth and skill” (spoiler, it hasn’t… yet). Making her podcast debut, we discuss her Halo career and history behind these unique HCS Grassroots events.

Making our way to the Halo World Championship, the latest Operation for Halo Infinite has dropped bringing refreshes to matchmaking including Firefight update featuring some Reach Forged maps and, of course, sandbox tunings and updates to Forge. After we’re done with the news, we don’t just have one, but two books to review: Shadows of Reach and Divine Wind, meaning Dust Storm is now only three books behind the latest release.

Thanks to 343 dropping a decent chunk of news regarding the upcoming operation, we’re changing direction of our originally planned book podcast to discuss what we can expect dropping into Infinite next week. VIP makes its return to the mainline games since Halo 3 and Headhunter from Halo: Reach is coming in hot a few weeks later. Along with weapon and vehicle tunings, Forge is getting an overhaul with new scripting capabilities including triggering the voice of Halo himself, Jeff Steitzer.

This past week was a rather somber week for Halo fans. The Halo TV Show has been cancelled on Paramount+, causing 343 Industries and Xbox to try to find a new home for future seasons. It’s no surprise as it unfortunately did not resonate with Halo fans. Axis Studios, which has worked on numerous animations and cutscenes for the Halo franchise, starting all the way back to Poncho Chief has also shut down. Amid this news, we tackle a recent discussion that’s been making the rounds in the broader Halo community: whether or not the all-but-confirmed Halo remakes should be done, and if so, to what extent. If you want to contribute to future discussion topics, make sure you hop in our Discord server.

Seems to be the same song and dance with both Dust Storm and Godzilla T, life events keep cropping up and time between recording sessions grows. Life just deals the cards like that, but hey, there’s a bit of Halo news with a new Operations Pass and a couple of new modes rotating through Halo Infinite matchmaking. For the lore folks, the name of the operation hints at Anvil Station with some interesting customizations to support it.

Our apologies for not having the podcast for a month. We’ve had a series of live events come up and get in the way of more recent recording opportunities and we took one of the weeks to play the Survive the Undead playlist. There’s a whole lot of news that we didn’t get to this in this episode, and Dust had to cut it short. Ideally, we’ll pick up the rest of the news next week. There are some exciting things like Match Composer in Halo Infinite, Halo: Combat Evolved all but confirmed for a remake in Unreal Engine and much more!

Halo Infinite lands CU32, erm… Banished Honor brining more game balances and fixes but introduces the new Spartan Points system integrated with the newest Operation. The Plasma Pistol gets its classic zap effect back and the latest Forge additions are sure to make community content keep flooding in. Meanwhile, Dust Storm continues to listen to audio books, and we have the bittersweet Point of Light to discuss.

Season 2 of the Halo TV show has concluded and, while it took a couple of delays to get here, we give our rundown of the season: thoughts on the story, production, action, ties to the main universe, and of course, what we could expect from a third season. All the while, the next content update is slated to hit Halo Infinite next week among a little drop of content this week.