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.