In the 20 years Podtacular has existed, we've had the pleasure of seeing the Halo franchise evolve and the community with it. From competitive Halo starting with MLG to Halo: Outpost Discovery, the community is at the heart of the Halo Universe, and it's been our pleasure to cover the universe in its entirety with hundreds of guests and opportunities to make an impact on the Halo community. As a capstone to the current tenure of the podcast, we have the absolute pleasure of having the founder of Podtacular, foomojive, and former hosts GLewis and Lancelot to recount their time hosting the podcast.

Covering the recent events of the Halo World Championships and the announcements of Halo Fest and Halo: Campaign Evolved, JumperScape's Austin, Connor and Shane join us as the curators of the Community Corner at the Halo World Championships. Listeners will become more familiar with them as Podtacular is merging with JumperScape and Dust Storm handing the microphone over to them to host the podcast. As some listeners may have noticed, our releases slowed down over the last several months due to live events happening for the hosts and it was time to find the next caretakers of the podcast. Dust Storm will still pop into shows and help with the direction as JumperScape takes the reigns, but the podcast will have a new home after this episode.

It has been a pleasure to spend our weeks with all of our fans and we hope you will embrace the change as we move to brighter futures and more opportunities for Podtacular to shine.

JumperScape has humble beginnings starting with their Halo audio drama of Tarkov. Since then, they have grown to a multimedia company producing another season of Tarkov in the works, several podcasts, the dramatic retelling of Waypoint Chronicles and more. We have the pleasure of having Austin on again for the fourth time along with two other co-hosts of the Library: Shane and Connor.

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.

The second Halo Infinite Technical Preview has concluded along with our first exposure to the newest renovation to Big Team Battle in Halo. We’ve had a couple of weeks to digest what we’ve played and have our impressions ready to discuss. Only having one map on replay makes it hard to properly put into perspective what the overall experience will be at launch, but it does give us some things to think about before launch in December. Season 8 also dropped for MCC with the introduction of new maps, customization, challenges and more!

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!

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.

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.

This week we play a little catch up after being off for a couple of weeks. While the Halo TV show has concluded, we’re taking this episode to discuss up through episode four. A bit of a shorter one, but we’ll wrap up the rest of the TV show in the next episode.

Better late than never as we delve into Season 2 of the Halo TV show taking a look at the first episode. Making the initial connections to the game lore, we start to see the development of the events of Reach with the silver lining. Since GT was out last week, we got to play some Custom Games for Fraggin’ Friday last week, which went off. Thanks for joining us!

While we missed last week due to Dust Storm being sick, an interesting topic came up in the Halo Community. A former 343 Industries developer shared on Twitter that 20 to 30 ideas for Halo games were pitched and turned down by Microsoft over the last 12 years, begging the questions, “What kinds of games would the Halo community love to see Halo explore across other genres or stories in the Halo Universe?” and “Why were so many projects turned down when Microsoft has so many studios with various expertise that could expand the Halo franchise?” We take some time to explore these questions and catch up on the latest Halo news.

It’s a lore-filled week as the Halo TV Show’s Season 2 has kicked off on Paramount+, we have another Halo Chronicle and Halo: Epitaph releasing in a couple weeks. Dust Storm is solo this week covering the rest of the Halo News with an unexpected MCC patch, more community articles on Waypoint and the upcoming first HCS open of the 2024 season.

To kick off the new year, 343 Industries hosted their first Spartan Chatter of 2024 updating u s on what’s coming in the next content update. Moving away from the season cadence, Halo Infinite will now have 4 to 6-week operations to deliver content more frequently as it’s ready. The Spirit of Fire Operations lands January 30th, bringing updates to Forge, playlists refreshes and a new map Illusion.

Welcome to a new year, Spartans! This year is shaping up to be quite a year, leading off on a great streak of content on Halo Infinite, the next season of Halo Infinite competition and the Halo TV Series, and so much community content still blowing our minds. Sadly, it looks like we are at the end of the road for MCC development, but community mods are thriving, not to mention our podcast hosts have finally completed Cursed Halo.

Halo Infinite’s Season 5 is here and with it, new maps and modes and already into the mid-season update with the return of Firefight! After an extended break and Thanksgiving holiday in the states, we couldn’t be more excited with the continued content roll-out. As we enter the holidays, we’re thankful for everyone who listens, joins our game nights on Fridays and joining us live on Saturdays for our new podcast recording time. We look forward to playing with you all on Halo!

This week, we talk a bit more in depth on the Extraction game mode and the new maps, Prism and Forbidden introduced in Season 5 of Halo Infinite multiplayer. We’ve had some time to get plenty of games and share our thoughts on the continued content delivery that continues to bring people back to Halo and new players exploring the scene. The next operation, Combined Arms is our first foray into the new events and battle pass structure introduced this season and Halo 3 Refueled is on its way as well.

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.

After two months and a delivery later, Dust Storm returns to the microphone with Godzilla T to take a speedy look at the jam packed conclusion to Halo Infinite Season 4 and HCS Season 2. As we move into Season 5, Forge has never been more powerful, 343 continues to knock out new content out of the park and HCS will return for a Season 3 in Infinite! There’s so much stuff to bring up in one show we’re going to have to break it down a bit more where appropriate. We definitely recommend checking out our friends at HCS Pro Talk for all the HCS content in the meantime!

Another month of incredible Halo drops and an uptick in population spells some good news for Halo as content, playlists, improvements and more are in full swing. Forge has never give us such quality and diverse maps, the community art is stellar and we are just happy we get to share in it with you all.

The mid-season update for Halo Infinite Season 4 brings along with it several new things including a reimaging of Countdown from Halo: Reach called Dredge. Forge water gets an upgrade with reactive surfaces and several bug and quality of life fixes makes playing multiplayer a constantly refreshing experience. Halo: Outcasts has released and gets Dust another book behind. We’ll be off next week, but don’t miss our Fraggin’ Fridays on Halo Infinite if you’re looking for a group to play all the latest content with!

It’s been a few weeks since our last show while Dust Storm was redoing his streaming set up, so there’s a lot of news to catch up on. The latest Community Spotlight, Forge Features, HCS Event and book (yes, this means Dust is falling even more behind) is up for discussion along with a little twist. While we’ve haven’t recorded the podcast in the last few weeks, we have been playing the Cursed Halo mod, which is very much what it sounds like. Strap in for a short, but dense episode.

In a double surprise this week, we got a new Halo Infinite playlist drop and a season’s worth of content in MCC. Squad Battles brings Three of the best Halo 3 Forged maps to Halo Infinite in classic 8v8, which has probably been the best playlist addition to Infinite yet! And on the MCC side of things, the Digsite team has outdone themselves over the last 6 months. There’s way too much stuff to list it all here, so just go check Waypoint for the incredible amount of content that just released for MCC, including Theater for Halo 4, Custom Controller Mapping, 8-Player Firefight and Halo 3 Escalation Slayer.

After a week into Season 4 of Halo Infinite’s multiplayer, we’re already getting new content with a new Forge map Solitude and a surprise delivery of Mini Slayer! With the amount of content that’s been delivered and the great reception of new modes, this season has turned out to be one of the best received. With the quarterly cadence established, it’s refreshing to look forward to a steady flow of content.

On this special episode, we dive into Halo Fan production November Black. Taking inspiration from Halo lore, November Black is a short film set to follow ODSTs fighting of Insurrectionists before the events of Halo. We’re pleased to welcome Vulture Productions and returning guest Mooreshots on to talk about this project’s inception, timelines and goals.

The run up to Halo Infinite’s Season 4 is just around the corner. We have the details laid out all on Halo Waypoint where we have lined up next week Infection making it’s return with a thematic reintroduction. Along with Infection, we’re getting one new Arena map: Forest and one new BTB map: Scarr. Also coming with Season 4 is the Threat Seeker and Quantum Translocator, two new pieces of Spartan equipment. Career Ranks makes it’s debut along with a new Battle Pass and plenty of quality of live improvements.

It’s about time we wrapped up our Halo Infinite campaign discussion as we cover the final two missions: House of Reckoning and Silent Auditorium. While the lore into Zeta Halo’s past was not touched on as much as lore fans may have wanted, there’s definitely tidbits that make us excited for what is set up for the Master Chief’s next adventure. The Banished were a respectable and formidable antagonist and the Endless throws an interesting new avenue that continues to expand the Halo Universe. We’re happy to welcome back PrestigeAce as a guest on our show as part of his Patronage.

The second installment of Spartan Chatter bring us one step closer to Season 4 content in Halo Infinite! Career Ranks, Plaza Remake, Infection and Cross Core are all coming June 20th as the summer kicks off, and yes, their painfully aware of all the desync issues, crashes and settings resets plaguing players. Join us on Friday nights at 8:30PM Eastern time to play Halo Infinite multiplayer with the community!

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.

Halo Infinite just received a May update bringing Super Fiesta along with balance changes to multiplayer. While these updates aren’t thematically set to any Season 3 content, the update is a welcomed update in the ongoing quicker roll-out of content coming out of 343 lately. On the not-so-bright side of things, just after two years of relaunching, the Halo Waypoint app for mobile is sun-setting, leading us to rant on the shortcomings with engaging with the Halo franchise outside of the game.

On this episode, we have the incredible honor of interviewing Brad from Impact Props, who recently reached 1 million subscribers on YouTube! While Dust and Brad have been friends for a long time, we’ve never had them on to talk about how they got their start and get a rundown behind the wacky ideas of Living With Chief. If you recently saw the video of Chief on an airplane, that was indeed Impact Props and there’s a few tidbit stories from that experience within. Also, happy 30th birthday Brad!

Dust Storm and Godzilla T are back with a new Community Spotlight to cover from Halo Waypoint and a new Modtacular series featuring some of the best community mods for MCC. It’s nice to finally see some mods getting the nod from 343 on the amazing work the community has put in especially with the Steam Workshop integration. Another couple of campaign missions is also on deck with Repository and The Road, where the culmination of Cortana’s betrayal after Halo 5: Guardians is fully laid out. In other news, Dust Storm has been invited to participate in HaloHubGG’s BTB Invitational this weekend. Tune in next time for the results on how Team Magick does!

Godzilla T is back with a few new community articles from Halo Waypoint with a new Forge Spotlight with a lot of remakes and another Canon Fodder. Big thanks to those who sent their well wishes to GT for the passing of his pet last week.

Week Two of Fracture: Firewall is here in Halo Infinite and with it more story shards with our old pal Governor Sloan, but amidst the musings of Halo, we are honored to have our first guest of the year, MagickMoonshot. Streamer, Caster, Community Manager, and Events Coordinator only begins to scratch the surface of what she does as a relatively new person to the Halo community space. Our interview with her takes us to her roots in gaming through her involvement with LVT Halo, Status Quo and the Lady Spartan Series. Give her a follow and check out this weekend’s Lady Spartan Series event on Saturday, April 15th and get an exclusive Twitch drop!

Inadvertently off for two weeks, we’re through our first Season 3 Fracture event, but plenty of other things are coming around the corner Halo Infinite as more stories unfold. Talking of stories, we enter our campaign discussions again with The Sequence, Nexus and The Control Spire, where we encounter the tension between Chief and the Weapon come to a head.

Season 3 had a great opening with Chasm and Cliffhanger in Arena’s Featured playlist, but now it’s Big Team Battle’s turn, and Oasis has proven to be quite the fan favorite as we’ve gotten a few take on Fiesta with campaign upgraded sandbox items and Escalation Slayer. Besides Season 3 updates, not much more to see here this week.

Season 3 is here and boy have we missed new content. Aside from a bit of a rocky start on the game server side, it seems like everyone has enjoyed the latest maps, modes and equipment, hopefully a sign of great things to come and a solid seasonal release. Of course there’s always the saying, “we’ll have to wait and see,” but it seems like 343 is getting on track and hitting some high marks once again.

Season 3 brings along three new multiplayer maps, weapons, equipment, matchmaking improvements and story lines that has piqued the community’s interest and hopefully is the start of renewed interest in Halo Infinite. The shakeup at the studio hasn’t seemed to impact the rollout of new content and the train seems to be getting up to full speed. HCS Charlotte also saw the Green Wall continue their dominance as Optic Gaming took home the trophy.

The largest content update is about to hit Halo Infinite since launch, and a lot of folks are happy with what’s coming. A new BTB map, two Arena maps, Escalation Slayer, Shroud Screen, Bandit, Armor, Narrative and more are on their way in just a few days. 343 has been kicking things into high gear lately and it seems like the content train is finally catching up. Also this weekend is HCS Charlotte, the first stop in the second season of competitive Halo for Infinite.

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!

Dust Storm and Godzilla T are joined by two of Podtacular’s Patreon supporters: PensHalo and Confal. As long time members of the Podtacular community, they share a lot of the same Halo interests as our hosts. With the recent changes to 343 and the upcoming season, we get their thoughts on what’s coming up for Halo.

In a last minute surprise before season 3 comes to Halo Infinite next month, 343 has introduced the Community Collection playlist, bringing community Forged content to Matchmaking in an evergreen playlist that will be continuously updated. After a lot of community outcry from not enough content since launch, this is a welcomed addition to the online experience. We also received the HCS Season 2 roadmap (hope you live near Texas), a new Halo Waypoint Chronicle, and more!

According to a recent Bloomberg report, 343 Industries is “all but starting from scratch” when it comes to the future of the Halo franchise, with now over more than 90 confirmed departures from 343 along with additional contractors, it seems like the development of Halo is undergoing large restructuring for the immediate plans of Infinite’s live service and the next gaming experiences. Rumors involve the next experience expanding on the alleged Tatanka battle royale type mode being more fleshed out into a separate title on the Unreal engine to match 343’s new direction with Unreal. While there’s cause for uncertainty, this isn’t the first time we’ve had a major shift in the direction of Halo. For those sticking around we’re along for the ride with you.