human actors

As long as the people who make games continue to be limited to the type of people who play games, they'll never succeed in making the games look cool to the rest of us. But this Halo 3 ad, which debuted during E3 this week, would turn even my grandparents on.

A massive ship blots out the sun in the distance—there's a bit of To Live and Die in L.A. in the cinematography—and earth begins arming itself for war. We're whisked inside the military-industrial complex of tomorrow, where robots forge steel into 22nd-century rifles and floating warships. Then, of course, they have to go and muck it up by throwing in real live human actors dressed for futuristic battle (they instead look like they're in line for a comic-book convention), but hey. It's a step toward Hollywood's movie/videogame/cartoon future. —Jacob Ward