Every time I re-watch the ending of Halo 3 I get the chills. I’m not sure what it is, but the story of Master Chief sparks emotion in me that not many movies even can. It’s like Titanic for dudes—but without the Leo and Kate car sex and class struggles. Whatever the reason is for that emotion, that strong connection that Halo makes with fans is important to Microsoft, and they want to do more with it to sell a bunch of copies of Halo 4 later this year.

So, with the goal of bringing the series to more people—longtime fans and people who have never previously played the games—Microsoft has invested more money than ever before in live action. A new live-action series, Forward Unto Dawn has been announced that will get everyone on the same page in a non-intimidating way before the launch of Halo 4. Slotted to air exclusively on Halo Waypoint and Machinima, the series will tell “an origins story that teaches you a lot of different facets of the [Halo] universe.” says Frank O’Connor, 343 Industries franchise development director.

The series is planned to launch in weekly 15-minute installments for five weeks during the time leading up to Halo 4’s release date on November 6^th 2012. More details about Forward Unto Dawn will be revealed during Comic-Con this July.

Hopefully this gets us one step closer to a full-length Halo movie.

The pilot episode of the fan made Halo: Helljumper series hit YouTube last week. If you didn’t know, Helljumper is a short series of films that follows the life of one human ODST from his enlistment in the UNSC before the Human-Covenant War to around the Fall of Reach. The series, which is a spin-off of the Tobias Brickell Halo: Evolutions – Essential Tales of the Halo Universe short story “Dirt” was teased late in 2011 to a very captivated Halo audience.

In the first episode, main character Gage Yevgenny has just been saved from a losing firefight by a rookie soldier on the colony of New Jerusalem. Instead of letting the Rookie complete his rescue, Yevgenny forces him to listen to his story of the war, so that hopefully he doesn’t repeat the same mistakes. This prompts  a series of flashes into Yevgenny’s past that’s littered with cool special effects, an  evoking musical score and some rather awkward acting and dialogue—“You coming on to me, Soldier?” and “Excuse me, miss, do you happen to have a map… ‘cause I’m lost in your eyes” are a couple of my personal favorites.

Bad acting aside, it’s a cool concept that represents the highest form of video game love.

The next episode is due out on February 15^th.