So. PAX.
On Friday I parked in the lot connected to the conference center around 8:15 and headed straight to the Sheraton hotel across the street and upstairs for the Halo Anniversary panel. The line queued up in a small room adjacent to the conference room, and I was about 100 people back, in the corner.
As the crowd filled up, Enforcers came by to help pass the time. Beach balls were soon bouncing around the crowd, but there was a purpose to them. After a few minutes, they plucked two teams of 10 from the crowd and set them against one another in a game. They stood in rows and had to pass the ball to the person behind them, one person over their shoulder, the next between the legs, the next over the shoulder, and so on, until the ball reached the back of the line, where that person ran to the front and repeated. The first team to get through all 10 players first got some swag (I didn't see what).
You can see the balls getting knocked around the crowd here. It was a festive atmosphere.
One fine young Enforcer came by with a plush sheep, asking, "Have you hugged a sheep today?" Those answering in the negative got to hug the sheep. I was too far, back, alas.
The panel itself you saw online as well (and perhaps better) than I did. It was great.
Some random cosplay:
After that, it was off to HaloFest:
HaloFest itself was very well put together. Not just in terms of content, but also the layout, which was very smartly done. Rather than one big gaming area, there were many, and they were distributed around the show floor. The line queues were all pointed in different directions, and none dumped out into one another. It was a marked contrast to the very messy main show floor. No lines were more than a few minutes throughout the event, which was impressive since there were a lot of people there at all times. Major props to Microsoft's team for a very well planned show.
The more you looked around, the more you saw. Is that Mr. Chief as Van Gogh missing an ear?
Oh look, there's Kat lurking in the shadows.
There was a Spartan made out of Mega Bloks; you could enter a drawing - guess how many blocks (bloks?) it took to build him, and win...something, I forget what. I guessed since you got a little action figure for entering.
Friday night was the VIP party at HaloFest, where we saw the best cosplay of the entire show:
At the party, Claude (Louis Wu) was given an award and the first of the six limited run duke controllers. Here's the handoff:
Devin posted pics of the epic cake (and no, that's not an abuse of the word 'epic' - the cake was epic). Here's pics of me eating the cake. Or rather, the bit of cake I got with the frosting:
I'd gotten in line when I saw them brining out the knife to cut it, so I got slice #5. Observation and timing FTW.
The layers of fondant around the outside of the cake were thick; it was comprised of two layers, the inner to lend support, then a second layer that was printed with the Halo screenshots.
Fondant is almost pure sugar, so I could only do a few bites. Neat to eat a picture, though.
Here's a douchebag scalper, of which there were tons. I wanted to punch them all in the gut every time I walked by.
Beanbag surround the main floors. Day 1 they are soft and pleasant. Day 3 they are soggy with nerd sweat.
The show floor was absolutely packed; I literally didn't play any games this year due to the crowds, just did lots of watching and soaking up of swag.
The Skyrim booth was fucking awesome:
Hitmonchan and I hit up the Sunday Skyrim panel, which we got in by the skin of our teeth thanks to some lucky positioning and timing. The Friday panel was canceled, which we didn't realized, so 2x the number of planned attendees showed up.
I tried to take a pic of the line to PAX that morning but this guy jumped in front. Jerk.
The line was a madhouse. But it was worth is since on every seat was a plush helmet from the dude in the demos:
Here's some guy trying not to look like a dork wearing one (and failing miserably).
It was surreal and awesome to see them in the crowd, though:
Before I left, I put together two nearly identical swag bags, one for each of my kids. Action figures, whoopie cusions, Master Chief piggy banks, posters, foam chainsaws, t-shirts, the works. I managed to snag two of most things. One swag bag even had a new Reach controller (!!!). My bags alone filled up half the trunk. The kids could barely stay away from the loot when I walked in the door Sunday night (past their bed time, no less):
It was like Christmas on speed, as they tore through the goodie bags, leaving wreckage in their wake:
Lots of good stuff in the mix.
But as I said before, the swag is neat, but the real enjoyment at PAX was the people. HBO, HaloGAF, random folks, the guys and gals of 343 (all of whom were class acts). Long after the swag has disappeared into the ether of my kids toy mixtures, the memories will live on. Good times were had.
Some crappy videos; I haven't even labeled them yet, which I'll do in the morning.
Wandering around HaloFest's VIP party. See if you can spot the part where I drop the camera (wrist strap FTW), it's hard to spot. Not the best filming job but I wanted to show a bit of the layout for those who couldn't make it; it was hard to film and dodge bodies at once.
They had Claude cut the cake.
Wandering around the show floor a bit. I took this video mostly to show the crowds and atmosphere; I had to stop filming because it was hard to walk through the crowd with the camera out.