Yesterday, select members of the gaming press were invited to play a little bit of Halo 3 before its impending release. None of them can talk about their experience until September 23, but in the meantime Chris Remo of Shacknews sat down with Bungie content manager Frank O'Connor to discuss the State of the Developer.

Unsurprisingly, the team is already considering what downloadable content to add to the game. "For example," said O'Connor, "we already now see there will be a need for more smaller symmetrical maps ... I think [content packs] will be, if not more frequent, more predictible and smoother."

Also discussed was the map tweaking of Forge, where 23 hours prior to the interview, O'Connor reveals that testers created a baseball gametype with rocket launchers and gravity hammers. "They even got bases in," he said. If only The Sandlot used rocket launchers, then they'd never have been afraid of that ill-tempered dog. How about a game of Krikkit, anyone?

The super-secret Peter Jackson project was also briefly mentioned. All O'Connor would say is that it "continues on pace" and that Bungie producer Curtis Creamer and cinematics director CJ Cowan managed to crash a Warthog into a wall.

Spencer Yip of Siliconera snagged some facetime with Brian Jarrard and Frank O'Connor of Bungie to ask the question that a lot of us have yearned to ask ourselves: what's with the whole Halo DS thing that IGN's Matt Casamassina keeps insisting is real?

The official word is: if he played it, it wasn't from Bungie. So Casamassina's probably not insane or lying, but it's not anything resembling a "real" Halo DS with the official stamp of Bungie approval. Apparently, the idea of Halo on the DS has been pitched numerous times, so Jarrard and O'Connor said that if Casamassina played a handheld Halo, it was probably a prototype mockup for one of those pitches. Sorry to dash any hopes, but the Bungie duo didn't sound too enthused on the idea of Halo on Nintendo's dual screens. They wouldn't rule it out, but it seems we're not the only ones who have a few reservations about FPS games on the DS. That doesn't mean there couldn't be a Halo spinoff of some sort, however!

We can only hope this puts a stop to the discussions of whether or not Halo DS ever existed, even if it doesn't really answer the question. We can, at least, say for sure that Bungie didn't make an official version, but maybe your neighbor Bob is working on one right now. Why don't you go give him a hand?

During a late night Microsoft interview session last Friday, we had a few minutes to chat with Bungie's head writer and (handsome) public face, Frank O'Connor. As was the case with our previously mentioned Peter Molyneux interview, we only had four minutes before being shuffled off to the next interviewee. The next interviewee, as it turns out, was Peter Molyneux. We'll let you sort out this blog writing time paradox on your own. For now, it's time to focus on the subject at hand: Pimps at Sea. Oh, and we asked a few questions about Halo as well.

First of all, when did you actually start Halo 3's production? Was it almost immediately after Halo 2?

Some of it was even before, you know, some of the concepting and design stuff was done before then, but pretty much three years of development.

When you were doing Halo 2, was there a time when you were thinking Halo 1, Halo 2 and that was it, or were you always thinking trilogy?

We were thinking of a trilogy. I can't say that we felt that during Halo 1 but certainly during Halo 2. That became very apparent that there was more story to tell than could fit into a 10 hour, 11 hour game.

The last trilogy you did for Mac was the Marathon games. And Halo 1 you were originally doing for Mac ...

There's some symmetry there, yeah.

During the Halo 3 beta preview in New York, the guys over at Joystiq cornered Bungie's very own media man Frankie to discuss everything Halo. And even though he was tight lipped about Halo 3's story and future projects, he did talk about the Halo movie, what Bungie wants from the beta, and what kind of input they'll be taking from fans. Frankie also throws a hard left hook at Nintendo's Miyamoto for his remarks about Halo ... and let's just say we're looking forward to Bungie's new 2D side-scroller. Read the full interview after the jump.

While checking out the Halo 3 multiplayer beta in New York tonight, we managed to nab Bungie's Frank O'Connor for a little one-on-one to get answers to some of those Halo-related questions that have been floating around for too long. Questions like, what's going on with the movie, how are those episodic installments coming along, and could Miyamoto really have made Halo?

Could you let us know who you are and what you do at Bungie?

My name is Frank O'Connor. I'm the writing lead at Bungie and that basically means that I lead a small writing department that does game script, combat dialog, some of the Marvel graphic novel, the comic book series, the books, the marketing, whatever. Anything that involves writing.

You, of course, also do Bungie's Friday updates,

I do Bungie.net so I'm sort of the de facto face of Bungie because everyone else is too busy and important.

It's humbling, I'm certain.