[This week, every day has felt like a Friday. We did a thing called the "Bungie Fair" which as really a big show and tell where the various groups – art, design, engineering, all showed off their work from our next project, some of it in the form of multimedia presentations, some of it in very real, discernable graphics, running as actual gameplay with placeholder graphics. Some of it even had sound effects and music.

Naturally most of the stuff is still shrouded in secrecy, but I did get to see a taste of a lovely user interface. It's amazing what you can do with higher resolutions and lots more power. My favorite UIs ever include TiVo, PSP and of course the 360 "blade" interface. The UI I saw during that demo was every bit as elegant and in some ways, more dramatic than any of those. And simply because of the nature of UI – it looked "finished." Which was kind of shocking, although in reality, it was very early, and it will probably undergo many, many complete overhauls before it ships.

But ironically, the way we're prototyping aspects of this next game mean that even some gameplay tests, demos and experiments, are surprisingly polished and playable. We're all in the giddy position of being "forced" to play moments and elements from the next project.

Studio Manager Pete Parsons thought it was a Renaissance faire, and even though we explained it to him, he still ate too much fried dough and threw up after twirling merrily around the maypole. Tra-la-la.]

Source: Bungie.net