Joystiq's Christopher Grant managed to nab an interview with Bungie's Frank O'Connor, the company's writing lead. Several interesting tidbits were revealed in the interview, but here's what we feel are the most juicy.

Fist, when asked what he felt were the changes in Halo 3 that players will complain about immediately, he responded by saying that it will probably be with equipments. He notes that at first folks might feel that equipment might cause loss of game balance, but he clarifies that in time they'll probably realize that the equipment Bungie added are self-balancing. Also, when asked about the Spartan laser, and how it's balanced, O'Connor noted that while the weapon is incredibly destructive, it takes 5 seconds to charge up - a lifetime in Halo.

Asked if there were things in from Halo 2 in Halo 3, O'Connor claimed that you'll see familiar locations, but you won't see anything from Halo 2 "dumped" into Halo 3. He says that, "You're literally not going to see a single asset from Halo 2 in Halo 3. Everything is being re-imagined or redone."

As for the movie version of Halo, Here's what O'Connor had to reveal:

They need to sort out the finances, the politics of it. It's really common in the movie industry for would-be competitors to cooperate on products, and you add a studio and a big corporation like Microsoft in the mix and it's really complicated. I personally wish that we kept up the momentum with the movie so that I could see it next year. That's not going to happen.

I just want to go on the record and say that Bungie is hard at work on a side-scrolling platform game featuring some plumbers -- I'm not going to say what their ethnicity is, it's none of anyone's business -- but we took that as a gauntlet, a sort of glove slap, and we're going to respond in 2D scrolling style. That's all I'm saying.